The World's Translated Thus
by Abyssal1
Summary: Optimus / Starscream AU. - COMPLETE -. Inexplicably drawn to their not-quite-prisoner Starscream, Prime must overcome the limitations of his culture and his past before he can save a dying planet. HARD M - Mature Only. TW - ALL
1. Discovery

WARNINGS: THIS STORY IS FOR MATURE READERS ONLY. NON-CON, DUB-CON, LANGUAGE, ANGST , VIOLENCE

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**THE WORLD'S TRANSLATED THUS **

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One: Discovery

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In the end it was Prowl who told him, after all the others could not, and Prowl hadn't even _said_ it, only whispered it, and then only in High Autobot, that ancient language of poets and thieves and traitors' confessions.

"Prime, you have to kill him. Take him to the listening station. He won't suspect anything. No-one will see."

No, but they were all expecting something to be done. All of them, from the Autobot soldiers who had come to Earth during the strange fork in their war that had brought them so far, to the ones left behind on Cybertron, trying to rebuild their shattered civilization. All of them.

If Prime was quiet, if he patched into the deepest levels of communication afforded to him as a Cybertronian and a leader among his people, he could even feel the concerns, the constant murmuring through the electromagnetic aether. Something was brewing among the ranks, something approaching mutiny. Not spoken aloud, but certainly there, transferred through hurried glances and brief sparksexual alliances.

More often now, a word percolated to the surface from the cyber-psychic undertow. Sometimes it was _change_ and _Decepticon_, and other times _Prime_ and _compromised_.

Nobody tried to hide their suspicions now. That fear. That realization. That there was a conspiracy in the making and Starscream was at the centre of it all.

At first, Prime had almost cuffed Prowl for speaking such an unthinkable thing. The emotion of anger, so alien and organic in his machine-body, had rocked him.

"I won't kill him, Prowl, he's too important to us."

"To us? To _you_ Prime."

Prowl had left Prime alone.

Alone.

And he was alone, because he'd given himself over to Starscream, come to rely on him for too much. The others might have understood raw physical gratification. They might have forgiven Prime that, especially when they could read in the landscape of Prime's battle-scarred body a lifetime of restraint.

They would not forgive what came after.

Prime stalked the Ark halls like something lost, pretending to inspect his troops and his equipment, but really searching for _him. _But Prime could not find him, and perhaps he did not want to be found.

Night came, bringing with it the atavistic pain of circadian rhythm. Prime lay on his berth and waited for Starscream to come, and Starscream did not come, and Teletraan One whispered in her Teflon voice, _he is with Perceptor tonight_.

"What are they speaking of?" asked Prime, wondering why the his chest burnt so. Why his metaskeleton seemed too small for him. Why his joints ached as if they'd been stretched beyond their safe working limits.

_I cannot say for certain, as Perceptor has initiated a silence command upon his quarters,_ the computer murmured, _but I decoded three bars of a song: _mY cIrcuiT bEars yOuR nAmE _. I believe it is an old Autobot sparkbonding routine traditionally sung before two individuals initiate spark..._"Stop," Prime said, "stop."

The second time Prowl asked for an audience, he brought more evidence, more witnesses. Prime had not recharged since Prowl's last visit, worn out by the thought of Perceptor and Starscream together. He was injured somewhere, in some profound and important place, but no diagnostic routine could tell him where or what, or how he could heal.

Perhaps there was no healing possible.

Mirage was there, Autobot-blue eyes white-hot with indignation. Wheeljack too, bringing up the rear, looking as if he would rather have been on the other side of the galaxy than here in Prime's quarters, bringing the hard facts of Prime's miscalculation, the proof of his weakness.

He wanted them to leave. He needed to think. He couldn't think with all of them watching, him wanting him to make a decision. Prowl would not let him be.

"Prime, you must see reason. He came here as a prisoner. He allowed himself to be captured. Why is it since he came there has been a cessation of Decepticon activities on Earth since he came? What are they waiting for?"

Prime turned away, tried to affect an air of thought and contemplation. All he could process was the ache that went deeper than the mechanics of his metaskeleton and immersed into his protomass, the nanoparticular plasma-flesh bridging organic and machine.

_This is what it feels like to be betrayed._"He has _seduced_ you," continued Prowl, "and Primus knows who else..."

The wall creaked as it took Prime's weight.

"...and this campaign of his has brought him secrets no Decepticon should know. He will destroy us."

The wall seemed insubstantial. Perhaps he would fall apart into constituent atoms, pass through it. Perhaps...

"The proof is flimsy, Prowl. I cannot accept it."

But campaigns had been fought on less evidence. What Prowl had brought was shattering, the recorded whispers in Plaintalk Decepticon of a planned takeover, a plot that could go well beyond cajoling words in the night. Starscream had always been a Decepticon. The Autobots had never conquered that cruel and brutal race, never managed to truly erase them. Even with Megatron gone they had survived, massed under their shadow-leader, Megatron's Second.

Prime grimaced, as he remembered a stolen conversation, him saying _"Why did Megatron never do away with you outright, Star? You must have represented a terrible threat to him."_ and Starscream replying casually how Megatron found him useful, he supposed, and needed to keep him close.

So many levels of meaning. All of them false, all of them true.

"Play the recording again, Wheeljack."

Prowl stared at Prime, willing him to make a decision. Starscream's translated voice was little more than metal under strain.

_..I don't love Optimus Prime...I much prefer you..._...and Perceptor (Perceptor!)their traitor speaking back in the same terrible code,

I will see that fool Xaaron and all of them eat their words when they see me as their leader...

...I shall conquer Prime, he shall kneel before me...what is his will be mine...

_I will help you, because I love you...we will find supporters. There are those who will align with you, for there are those who have wanted a change. They have admired your strength above all others, if we win their alliance, they will challenge the Elders...you will be victorious..._Wheeljack apologized at each static laced, pilfered sound-clip, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Optimus," and Prime sat as still as a stone. The eavesdropped recordings built up a web of lies, breathtaking in their ingenuity. Their prisoner, who had become Prime's lover, was at this very moment plotting a takeover with Perceptor and Primus knew who else.

"Is Perceptor lost to us?" asked Mirage.

Prowl shook his head. "I don't know. We'll see what decision Prime makes."

He couldn't decide. He was crippled by a memory of a violent pleasure so intense that it was almost profane. So wrong to use another mech's body to generate such feelings, but Prime had been greedy and defenceless, gorging on sensation after a lifetime of confinement and Starscream had said such things to him...

_You don't have to be what they say you are. You're more than a Matrix Bearer. You can escape this..._All lies.

Prowl kept to his argument. "What have you shared with him? How have you put us all at risk? The Elders back on Cybertron are already debating the possibility of passing the Matrix to another or even..." He could barely speak. "Even taking it away altogether."

Prime turned on his Second, his vocal processors grinding like gears worn down to metal. "I never had sparksex with him, Prowl!"

_Sparksex._There. The word was out in the open. He'd used the organic term, made something beautiful, offensive. Silence followed.

Prime let out a grunt of disgust that was more self-loathing than anything else. He had been rendered defenceless by Starscream's presence. He had forgotten that he was a Prime and had pleaded, (begged!) like a spark-child in the first throes of sentience to be allowed access to Starscream's spark. Starscream never allowed Prime that closeness. Not that and yet, he had eagerly opened his armour and let Prime nuzzle the delicate rills and tissues of his protoflesh. Such a strange contradiction.

At the time Prime had deluded himself. _Sparksex's not part of Decepticon culture, _he'd said to himself._ It can hurt, the first time. Starscream just needs to be introduced into the act gently_.

Wheeljack's recordings told him more about Starscream's motives than anything else could.

_I don't love Optimus Prime_...

"Prime..." murmured Wheeljack, in that sad voice of his.

However Mirage managed to do it was a mystery, but he still managed to look respectful and repulsed at once.

Memory-cores kept venting painful images, of Prime stroking the golden swell of a cockpit, the red curve of ramjet openings, Prime insistent, _open for me, open for me, please just let me look._ If Prime was patient, if Starscream was relaxed enough, his enemy-lover might fold back the armour of his chest and reveal the crimson penumbra of a Decepticon spark, peeking through like the sun on eclipse...

...exotic and terrible, and Prime's spark would hammer and expand at the proximity of a twin energy source so close to his own. Trembling on the furthest edge of control, Prime would try to bring his own spark close, try to whisper away the rust-hued fear in Starscream's optics - _fear that you would find out the truth, perhaps, Optimus?_ Not to touch, but just enough so flashes of information might arc between them. Long drives out across Earth-horizons with the sky like a bowl of blue-black and stars, or sunsets the colour of Starscream's optics, conversations with friends on long disappeared Cybertronian Art, from the circuit patterns of Gilgamech or the vocal harmonies of the Triodiad.

That time had passed now. Starscream had grown tired of their liaison, had gone to Perceptor to gather better intel. He had given Prime a glimpse of some unspeakably wondrous thing, and taken it away.

An unbidden, blasphemous thought: _There were times when I was with you, all you had to do was speak it, and I would have laid down my Leadership for you._Prime gasped at the thought. He was vulnerable beyond measure. Now everyone knew.

A firm hand rested on his shoulder. Prowl spoke with a strange, empathetic gentleness. "Will you do what is right? Will you regain the trust of your soldiers, the citizens?"

There was no other choice. He had to recover what he'd lost. Consider Starscream a lesson then, in what could happen if one was not careful. Prime began to shut down his emotion circuits, one by one, so a dead feeling came over him, a numbness, he became less sentient than automated.

"I'll do it," he said. "But give me time. He'll suspect anything out of the ordinary."

Everything became dimmer, then. Colours bled into grey. Edges became hard and sharp.

"And your alliance? Your promise in spark-bond? The Elders need to know your decision."

Prime turned to Mirage. The smaller Autobot was a favourite of the Elders, a Cybertronian Alpha, a mech who could trace his creation line back to Primus and the All-Spark itself. Mirage had waited for this a long time. He had won many people into his coalition, had petitioned the Elders and Senators hard for the privilege of taking Prime's sparkbond promise.

The history of the Prime Consort was stained with massblood and shame. Perhaps under an Alpha Prime descendant, it would be rescued.

"I choose you, Mirage. You and I will be bonded in accordance with Cybertron law."

Mirage bent his head, solemn, but his optics glowed a fierce radium blue. The cyberemones of his victory were so strong they seemed rancid, so obvious a battle he had fought to get to this place. He had faced off stronger, more decorated Autobots to win the right to take Prime to sparkbond. Now, before witnesses, he had achieved his ultimate success.

Sparkbonded to a Prime, he would almost be a Prime himself.

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tbc...


	2. You must kill him

Two: You Must Kill Hm

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_"It Is not enough to them that you have promised yourself in Sparkbond with Mirage. You need to dispose of Starscream. They have to see that you can do this, that you can put your people ahead of yourself...and your desires."_If there was any downside to living in proximity to the Ark, it meant privacy came at a premium. How could one ever be alone and safe at the same time? Earth did not afford the infinite levels of Cybertron, the multiplicity of bolt holes and ducts and abandoned spaces. Here, there was only ground and sky, and nothing in between. No places to hide. Nowhere to sneak off. A dozen frequencies of security scan swept out from their mouldering base, most of them overlapping, all of them sensitive to the movement of an insect on a rock, or a cactus swell during a rainstorm.

The closest thing to a blind spot in the thousands of square kilometres was a thirty-meter patch of earth they had come to call the sentinel-ledge. The ledge itself was a false plateau in the shade of a larger outcrop, hidden out on the furthest edge of the high plains. Out here the mesa valley stretched out in endless runnels and uplifts of russet stone, and the bowl blue of the sky was the same shade as a spark's fringe.

One season, early in their incursion, a scout with a poor feel for alien geography had seen fit to deploy a sentinel onto the ledge. A small automated robot with enough self-awareness to radio back if anything anomalous was spotted. The weeks that followed brought nothing of any note from that radio-sheltered spot. Only the busy records of organic life still existed in Teletraan One's memory - a pair of bald eagles who'd made their nest on the ledge that summer, the lizards that scampered between rock fissures, and even a lynx that had found its way down from the upper plateau. In time the unit was moved to a more appropriate location, and the name stuck, though the ledge remained empty.

No sensor would pick a pair of mechs at the sentinel-ledge. They could be alone to all the world.

Starscream flew on ahead, tracing a large looping circuit of sky. He executed a series of spins that left Prime wincing. Portable rockets never had that same quality of control, and Autobots had no true culture of flight. Even Wheeljack's aerialbot spark-children had a latent affinity to the ground. They were heavy and slow. Too easy to believe Starscream invulnerable, a silver-red streak in blue sky, as insubstantial as a recharge dream.

Prime cut the juice to his JATO array and monkey-clung to the side of a rock-face, watching as Starscream kicked in his afterburners, flew away until he was little more than a dark speck in endless blue.

Best if he kept on flying, kept climbing until he hit the stratosphere and beyond. Best if he never came back.

Prime decided to climb the last hundred meters unassisted, the JATOs cooling on his back. He needed to work off this destructive nervous energy with solid action, rather than in dwelling on what was to come.

But just as Prime began to wonder if Starscream had actually gone, the roar of jet engines knocked pebbles down the mesa face. Red and silver hovered for a brief second before transforming. A million facets of surface area folded in on themselves. The sinking sun glinted off raw protoflesh edges as the exoskeleton disappeared into shadow-space and the anthropomorphic self constructed from the constituent parts.

"Not here yet? I doubt you could be slower if you tried."

Prime crested the ledge and shook the dust from his exoskeleton. Starscream threw him an unreadable look.

It never ceased to amaze Prime how much smaller Starscream was in his anthropomorphic form. Smaller than one would expect from such a powerful alt-mode, all strangelets, quantum particles and stringy physics masquerading as something quite larger. Low flaring sunlight cast orange warrior stripes across the high, dark cheekbones of Starscream's face.

Prime wanted to touch him there.

Prime just wanted to touch him.

He wanted to touch him but kept his hands to himself. It would have defeated the purpose.

_Be strong,_ he thought. _It is only through lies and deceit that you have been made to feel this way._"So...you come here often?" asked Starscream, balancing on the lip of the ledge. The wind was still scurrying across his wings - even without propulsion he was still built for lift, and he tiptoed with a grace that Prime had never seen in any Autobot.

But remember...

Don't. Don't remember all those times he spoke with you, the exchange of small fears and intimacies. The way he treated you as more than the dead icon of a cruel religion. He saw that weakness in you. Knew what to say. Brought you to this place.

"Careful, you might fall," Prime said automatically, even though it would be so much easier if he _did_ fall.

Starscream gave him a look, then leant out into the wind, giving Prime a circuit-jitter flash of him being swept off the side, before stepping back.

"I won't."

Of course not, thought Prime. Starscream was more survivor than anything else. How else could he have lived all those years under Megatron? How else could he have ingratiated himself so thoroughly into the Autobot ranks?

Starscream had been a mess when he had come to them months ago, dented up and wild. During his capture he had sent one young 'bot to the All-Spark and nearly tore Red Alert's arm off before he could he restrained, and even then had to be kept bolted to the floor in the hangar.

Prowl had been furious at the capture. He'd been left in charge of the Ark while Prime had been negotiating a treaty between Cybertronian factions. Now they had a monster in the hangar, too political to kill, too dangerous to be free, and nobody knew what to do with him.

They had rarely taken prisoners, and of one so nearly high-ranking as Megatron himself, they had caught none.

For days they had argued.

"Kill him," Ironhide had said to Prime later. "He's clearly worn out his welcome with the Decepticons. Megatron will be sure to ruin his name. He'll be no martyr."

Jazz was vehement to the negative. "We didn't take him during a conflict. He was not armed. That puts us in a considerable ethical dilemma. We have enough trouble convincing the dark-planet Neutrals to stay supportive of Autobots. If they hear of us killing an unarmed soldier, half the planet will explode."

At last Prowl had come up with a solution. "We interrogate him. Open up his chest cavity and take the information from his spark by force."

This suggestion had been met with horrified silence. Without consent, the act of sparksharing for information alone would be akin to torture, or rape.

"You pull information out of a mech without his consent, you might as well pull off his armour at the same time," said Jazz, horrified. "You couldn't do anything worse."

The Ark 'bots had debated this for several more days. News came of a riot on Cybertron. Their tidally locked planet's orbit was fixed, Iacon in constant day, the dark cities of Tarn and Kaon a permanent night. The Neutral mechs of the dark-side, the Empties of the lower reaches, they rarely found the fuel to rise up in massed anger. But they simmered in their beaten-down righteousness and occasionally flashburnt into social unrest, like a tide barely contained.

"I'll do it," Prime had said when he returned.

"But he's _alive_," Jazz had argued. "It won't be the same as stripping a dead mech of his memories."

In the first instance, Prime knew that Starscream could overpower any lesser-ranked Autobot. More than once he'd pulled information from a Deception not-quite passed on to the All-Spark, felt the deadly images of their anti-intrusion mechanisms.

Secondly, he was experienced and strong in the art of spark-sharing. He had lain with Jhiaxus, Nova's best soldier, learnt from him the terrible skill of spark-interrogation. Prime knew how to extract information without giving up his own.

And secretly, his curiosity had gotten the better of him. He had only ever seen the Decepticon Second as an iridescent flash of silvery limbs or alt-mode demon. Never transformed and vulnerable.

"I have always known it," said Prime softly to Jazz, "When the Elders gave me to Jhiaxus to be student and lover. I always knew I would one day need to use what he taught me against someone else."

"He taught you to be cruel?"

Prime had looked aside. "He taught me the meaning of it, yes." Then, "As a Prime I have sanction to carry out the act. It is still according to Law."

On entering the hangar, the first thought that struck Prime was: _Primus, he's so small._Not small, like Bumblebee. Starscream was bigger than Jazz or Prowl. Big as Ratchet maybe. But Prime had always thought Starscream's anthro mode would match Megatron in size. That presence, the rumours of the power struggle between the two Decepticon leaders. Yes, he'd imagined him a giant.

Fixed fast to the floor with meters of steel cabling, Prime had almost felt sorry for him.

Starscream had looked at Prime with such hatred. Prime wondered if Decepticon eyes could cut a mech in half, like the character in a spark-child's horror tale. He'd never been the focus of such intense loathing before.

Prime knew very little Decepticon speech. A few phrases, that was it. He'd only needed one to get the conversation started.

"_Why have you come here?_"

His Decepticon was awful. A baleful glare and a dismissive turn of head, but not before Prime detected a flash of hopelessness pass across that beautiful, dark face.

Oh yes, Starscream knew what was going to happen, knew as soon as he had seen Optimus Prime himself step into the hangar.

In Autobot: _You came to us, because you had no choice, is that it?_No recognition in those crimson optics, but Prime had expected none. It was unlikely that Starscream understood any of the Autobot languages or codes. English then, and not all Decepticons spoke it with any measure of fluency. Prime had recalled Spike's amusement at hearing Decepticon and Autobots hurling English curses at each other, arguing with all the grammatical complexity of human children.

But with spark-interrogation, he would not need to speak.

"Why are you here, Starscream?"

"To see you die!" In the Earth language Starscream's Decepticon accent was strong - low fidelity and static-laced.

"Hard to do, tied up like this. Did Megatron think that sending one warrior alone was going to achieve any outcome other than losing him?"

"I will destroy you," Starscream shouted, "I will tear your limbs from you and crush your spark to dust!"

"No doubt you could, given time and plenty of backup. But you were found alone, and injured, which suggests more than what you are telling me."

That look of hopelessness again. The hatred in his optics was absolute, and his reply was only a whisper wracked with an emotion close to despair, "Kill me and be done with it, _Autobot_."

Something snapped in Prime. He didn't know what it was. Weariness of this long war, of his prisoner's sudden surrender. He wanted to get this over and done with as quickly as possible. Prime had straddled Starscream, slapped him with a heavy hand, and pulled apart the golden armour of his chest. He had only ever seen Decepticon sparks when they had been extinguished, never like this, brilliant and aching with life.

A perverse excitement flooded his sensors, excitement he fought to control. _Take no pleasure from this, Optimus,_ he'd scolded himself. _This is an act of war that has been banned on Cybertron for a million years._But the spark was so strong, so exotically brilliant that Prime was dizzy with yearning. Already he regretted making this decision. Too many years had passed since he'd opened his spark to another. This act was too much like sparksex. A spark would seek out a similar life-force, drag the body with it.

Starscream, maddened from days without energon, half-starved and lubricant leaking from his joints, had buckled under Prime's thighs. "You are just like him. You want to be like Megatron, have me in all the ways he has me!"

He was disturbed by a strange, crackling noise. Prime looked down, and goggled at Starscream folding aside his pelvic metaskeleton, revealing the shy opening, the sensitive internals wet with lubricant and sparking with rainbow hues of energon.

"He uses me and hurts me, is that what you want to know? Is that a comfort to you, _Prime_?"

Protoflesh. The halfway between meat and metal. Prime had pulled back, trying to avert his optics, trying not to look at this most intimate and hidden place on any mech's body. Why was he doing this? The vulnerability was obscene, worse than a wound.

"Stop," said Prime, his spark leaping in his chest. He'd never seen another living mech's protoflesh before. "Stop."

"Take what you want," Starscream had cried in a note of mad finality, and Prime had had such a instant of recognition of who and what he was, a large mech over a smaller one, an aggressor over a creature who had come to them weaponless and defenceless, this act so wrong that he'd been sick with it. All his programming demanded that he protect those that could not protect themselves. A looming, vertiginous hunger seized him. He'd only heard of bodysex, and then only obliquely during whispers of Decepticon perversions. Never guessed that it could be so powerful, the urge to release his protomass from the metaskeleton of his body and allow it entry into another's.

A sacrilege. Unthinkable.

Sweating lubricant, his exhausts churning, Prime had closed the armour plating, and with gentle hands had pushed Starscream's knees together. Primus, he could not tear his gaze away from the map of Starscream's thighs, the way the long armour plates drew his attention inwards.

"I am not like him. You'll be safe with us."

Starscream had looked at him then, his face blank with surprise. He'd murmured something in Decepticon, then said only, "Thank you."

Releasing Starscream from his chains had been the ultimate act of faith, the greatest test of leadership to say to the others: He is_ one of us now._They'd thought him mad, thought that the war had caused a glitch in somewhere in a logic gate.

Maybe they were right.

On this lonely plateau, Prime thought back on that first day and wondered when his own defences had been breached. How had Starscream found Prime's own personal sentinel-ledge, the part of him that was a weakness and could be exploited?

"We've never been here before," said Starscream cautiously. He had not yet retracted his wings. "I thought I knew all the secret places around the Ark."

"There are things we need to discuss."

He wondered if Starscream heard the difference in his voice. Starscream was not like the ever-adaptable Jazz, who adopted Earth's languages and idioms as they were his own. English was not a language he'd adapted to well.

"Are there?"

"Yes."

If Starscream was suspicious, now would be the time to show it. But he was still Decepticon-cool.

"Prime, Perceptor said that..." he paused, and the look he gave Optimus was hard. A split second, and Prime saw genuine aversion there, the same emotion he'd broadcast during the first days.

"Perceptor has a few projects that will need my attention."

"He seems to have many projects at the moment."

"He can be relied upon to finish what he starts."

"Not everything he does is useful. Sometimes he wastes his time on others' old experiments."

Starscream narrowed his optics.

"Better get on with what you want to say. My sonar's been glitching." Starscream was unusually sulky. "I don't want to be flying around after dark until Ratchet takes a look, if you know what I mean."

The sun cast low shadows across the alien planet. So different from home it was like an ache always. Prime felt his resolve crumble - he was always halfway to broken around Starscream - touched the warm almost-metal of Starscream's waist and leant in.

Starscream let out a sigh. Not so much a pulling away, but the cant of his body told Prime, _you are not welcome_.

A terrible hunger overtook Prime, a wave of grief and he pressed his face to Starscream's thorax, resting his cheek on the golden glass of his cockpit and thought, so this is where it ends.

The smaller mech felt restless under Prime's hands. He could feel Starscream trying to find some purchase on the rock, move away.

Prime's hand tightened at Starscream's waist. He blurted the question he didn't mean to ask.

"What is it between you and Perceptor?"

Starscream stilled. Slowly and carefully: "He is a friend. A fellow scientist. He has been teaching me some of the Autobot ways."

_Has he now?_Perhaps he would think back from some impersonal future, when all this was over. He'd remember this night as being his last in another's arms, 'bot or 'con. The last, because he could not conceive of himself putting himself through this again, this awful knowing and not knowing, to be awoken to a nameless hungry ache and never satisfied.

You must kill him.

Give me one more night, Prowl. I want some answers.

He couldn't do it. Not again.

His blue optics reflected back at him. He sensed Starscream's protomass, a radiant heat under the strange-metal cradle of his pelvis, his metal-skin glowing in the sinking sunlight.

Prime gave a small moan of defeat and pushed Starscream back against the rock, peeled away his faceplate and nuzzled at the nosecone between Starscream legs. The smaller mech shivered before pushing Prime away. "Not here. Later."

"Starscream..."

"Please, Prime. Not tonight."

Not last night, he wanted to say. Or a few nights before.

His hands refused to let Starscream go. His processors kept feeding him damage reports: _Something, something hurts._ He pressed his full weight down, trapping his former lover beneath him.

"Starscream..." he said, followed by a half whisper, half growl of, _don't deny me this_.

Starscream stopped struggling, became motionless and rigid. With what? Fear? Surrender?

_Kill him now._Starscream must have known he was in danger and had to buy time, for his armour fell open, revealing sensitive networks of nanotubules and circuitry, the laminae of his protoflesh. He was often hesitant to allow Prime to touch him there with fingers, but could never resist the gentle press of Prime's mouth into that dark, shadowed space. In the beginning he had protested, uncomfortable with such intimacies, but all it took was to have Prime fold back his battlemask and burr soft vowels against the exoskeletal surface until Starscream, lost to bliss, let him in.

Prime knew now the exact rise in vibratory frequencies that would make Starscream wail, the short sharp cries that narrowed out to long moans as overload approached, the bittersweet energon taste of him as he climaxed, his sleek frame shivering and bucking with electric discharge, the ozone smell. He sung old songs that only existed in subsonics. A poem from the just-dawn of a Decepticon age, when the singer had lost his spark-bonded brother to the new religion.

How apt, that now he sung that song into Starscream, who was no more his than distant sun at the point of nova. _Your life becomes forfeit/you are enemy, unspeakable/I must not speak your name/but in my every circuit your name is spoken/my brother-mate how can I stop, for to do so is to die..._Starscream's hands did not touch Prime. They disturbed the red dust at his hips, fingers gripping the dirt in anxious clenches.

Panic and grief made him clumsy. Prime opened his own pelvic armour, released from his metaskeleton the silvery protomass of his own body. Starscream murmured, not quite responding, (but this was where his actions had taken him, so how could he struggle?) as Prime palmed a trembling knee aside and plunged into giving-protoflesh with frantic jerks, his traitorous body sensing the coming emptiness and wanting to claim as much sensation as it could, while it could, and Prime was reduced to a cinder-spark of intellect on a mountain of need.

The mech underneath him was silent. Even when Prime overloaded and cried out, every servo and sinew stretched to breaking point, Starscream was absent. His dark face was inscrutable. His mechanical eyes had faded to a dark red, an elsewhere look.

At last Prime disengaged himself, sticky with liquid massflesh, pelvic armour marbled with spent energon and lubricant. His processors burned, overclocked to their maximum. The sun had fallen beyond the horizon, and their shadows had faded. The flame highlights on Starscream's traitorous face had gone.

Starscream would not look at him. The hands that had gouged trenches alongside his body now balled into fists.

Had it always been that bad for Starscream? Had he always shuttered his optics and waited for Prime to finish?

Something had broken inside Prime. He was certain. How else could he explain the damage reports flooding though his body? _Something hurts, something hurts._Then, unexpectedly, Starscream looked at him.

He read an emergent emotion Starscream's optics. Humiliation. Prime paused, and Starscream scooted out from under his grasping hands, leaving Prime clutching nothing.

Starscream blew a breath from his vents, used a fistful of sand to soak up the spilt silver on his thighs.

"I shouldn't have come out here. Perceptor..."

"Is something the matter Starscream?"

Starscream looked away evasively, then, "Is it true? You have promised yourself in Sparkbond with Mirage?"

"It is true."

Starscream nodded, calm and expressionless. "He will suit you, I think. You are of a kind."

The damage reports were coming in from all over now. _Hurts, hurts._Prime knew the time had come. He took some steps away, walked to the edge of the plateau.

"All right. Say it," said Starscream roughly, "If you have something to say. You didn't take me here just to _fuck_ me." He used the human term. Even with his flat Decepticon accent he sounded peevish.

"Wheeljack came to me two days ago."

"Oh?"

"He...he recorded what you and Perceptor have been speaking of, all the times you were together."

Starscream said nothing. But his optics had taken on a haemoglobin glow. The air was highly charged. Even the very rocks seem to be arcing electricity.

"I was shocked. And disappointed. I had thought...I had thought you would not consider such a thing, after I had done so much to keep you here."

The low growl came from Starscream's heels, charging up.

Starscream's recorded words kept intruding into Prime's memory: _I don't love Optimus Prime._"Wasn't that enough, that I let you free among us?" Prime's voice was static-laced with hurt. "Wasn't it enough I let you into my berth? Why would you want any more?"

Before Starscream could reply the squeal of JATOs echoed off the valley verticals, and Mirage tumbled onto the precipice, regaining his balance only by scrabbling across the rock. Cursing to himself, he stood up and pulled out his plasma rifle. Powerglide transformed on the top of the precipice and looked down upon them, weapons at the ready.

Starscream snarled and whirled, sensing as Prime did the other optics that now watched them from the darkening shadows. He was surrounded.

"We came to give you help," said Mirage. He did not ignore the silvery traces of their coupling still cooling in the red dust of the ledge. He curled his lip. "Prowl thought you might need some assistance in getting rid of this abomination."

"Nobody invited you here!" Starscream grated.

"Did you tell him Prime, about his little chats with Perceptor? All the pathetic plans he spoke of? How we've taken our own action?"

Starscream's optics were livid with rage. Prime had only ever seen a Decepticon look that furious during the heat of battle. It had been a long time since he had seen such naked hate and humiliation on Starscream's face, not since the time in the hangar, in those first days of captivity.

"Rust you," screamed Starscream at Mirage, "rust you to the very ground you stand on!" He followed with a barrage of Decepticon curses.

"Have you no shame?" Mirage shouted back. "Has your filthy ambition no bounds?"

"I was a leader before I came here," shrieked Starscream as he backed up towards the ledge, "the greatest Decepticon Leader ever known! Since being here I have suffered the ignominy, the shame of being a prisoner and Prime's _whore_!"

"How dare you speak..." Mirage leapt out at Starscream, but Starscream was faster - he dropped from the ledge like a stone.

"No!" shouted Prime.

Before any of them could react Starscream had transformed mid-fall and was firing both afterburners in an explosive cough. His thrusters lit up the valley floor in fire-orange, and Prime half imagined that Starscream had exploded, that his charred body would be falling to the scree of rocks at the mesa's base.

A sonic boom rung out, the shockwaves pounding a minor avalanche of sand down the mesa. It was followed by the guttural roar of Powerglide's transformation and clumsy mid-air takeoff. Starscream flamed into the direction of the purpling horizon.

"Catch him, Powerglide," shouted Mirage. "Don't let him get away!"

Numb, Prime watched as Powerglide followed the disappearing firelight flare for several seconds. Eventually Powerglide conceded defeat and made a reluctant turnabout. The 'bot's A10 alt-mode could never have caught up with Starscream, not even with the added boost of energon-fuelled power.

Mirage cursed, kicked a rock. "Rust it, we've lost him!" He watched as Starscream faded into a spot of light before turning back to Prime.

"Optimus, what happened? He was right there, and vulnerable."

"I...couldn't do it." Prime rubbed his head, wondering where it had all gone wrong, where his strength and leadership had gone. Fallen before Starscream. Broken, completely.

Mirage came close, laid a hand on Prime's arm. "It's all right," he said. "He won't come back. We've put Perceptor into the brig, and we'll get answers from him soon."

"Yes," said Prime dully.

"Then we will plan the ceremony."

"The ceremony?"

"Yes, our Sparkbonding ceremony. Remember?"

"Oh, of course."

Prime knelt to pick up a rocket pack, hefted it on to his back. Why did it seem so heavy? Why did even the force of this planet's gravitational pull seem too heavy?

"We must appease the Alpha Elders, and make our introductions to the Senators. If we bond as soon as possible, it will be the best course of action all around..."

Mirage continued, but Prime could barely hear him. His attention was pulled by strange centrifugal forces, like a magnet to a pole, like a wasp's sting to the west, to that last-gasp glimmer of light on the horizon, to the place where Starscream had gone.

* * *

tbc...


	3. love

Three: Another Word For Love

* * *

Their creation myths may have differed, but all the old stories had consensus:

The god-mech still existed. Primus lived in his permanent alt-mode of Cybertron itself, and if you could not be home, then you should be near a Prime, for he would be the essence of home, Cybertron made protomass and metaskeleton and living spark.

Now a celebration was coming, an occasion so rare that precedents were measured in the same timeframe as new Primes - a Sparkbonding, and more than that, a Prime Sparkbonding. A hundred times more Coronations than bondings could be counted, for Cybertron was diverse with those factions and tribes who had crowned their own regency. The occasion had been shrouded in cant and mystery from the first, when Primon, the God Prime, had forgone bonding and budded instead. He had passed his mass and Spark over to a new individual, Prima, Empress Prime, rather than cut his matter with anything less.

Prima was nothing less than a god's descendant. But when it came time for her to bond, she had birthed and died.

So a Prime-bonding was never a given, certainly not when the incumbent Prime had been so unlikely. The Prime lineage always seemed to court disaster, as if at any moment that single unbroken line to Primus would be tattered and disappear as a flag in a storm. All it would take was an assassination, a battlefield injury, or the death of the Matrix.

All three had overshadowed Optimus Prime like dark brothers.

Their adopted planet's hosts viewed the affair with more experienced eyes, leading one anthropologist to remark, "It's a goddamned Royal Wedding."

In the midst of all the speculative chatter, the undertow of a rumour. Optimus Prime had, for a short time, lost sight of his leadership. The details were unclear. He had certainly been involved in some minor indiscretion. Not that it mattered now, but it was enough for motivations towards such a sudden and politically astute Bonding to be questioned.

Prime never listened to rumours. If they were factual, then Wheeljack would tell him, but the minor mutterings of a few thousand mechs were none of his concern. It was not the first time. Early on in his reign the Senators had denied the extancy of the Matrix. The Thaumaturgie, priest-gods of the Celestial Temple, they had made certain there was no further doubt.

The days since Starscream had left now segued into each other, each one of them the same. He saw little of Mirage, but that was part of the Sparkbond ritual, the required separation until the day of the ceremony.

"It's good to keep yourself busy," Jazz offered when he saw Prime pace a restless perimeter around the Ark entrance, watching the sky. "You can go stir-crazy wondering what your Promised is up to."

"I know exactly what he's up to."

Jazz had the grace to look apologetic.

"I'm sorry. I forget you're a Prime, Optimus. But still, getting bonded, it's not just an ordinary thing, you know...?"

Prime wondered if he should feel overwhelmed, or annoyed, or pleased. But the fact was that he did not care. He didn't care about anything. He had lost a touchstone. Each day was the same. Life had lost its colour. When he was spoken to, it was as if the speaker's voice came from far away. Even the spaces between atoms seemed too wide. He would have an observation, an opinion, and would automatically think of sharing it with Starscream before realizing that Starscream was gone for good.

Jazz might have sensed Prime's condition, but was not - as he would have said himself in his slangy English - quite on the money.

"Before I bonded to Prowl, I ran myself ragged thinking about him," Jazz continued. "Where was he, what was he doing? What if he changed his mind, or decided he didn't want to bond with me? What if something happened to keep us apart?" A low look. "I know I was on the list for a Bonded candidate for you."

"I don't believe you needed to have worried," said Prime. "He loves you more than anything."

Jazz nodded, and Prime remembered the way Jazz's face had lit up on the day of his Bonding, the azure joy in his cyberemones. He remembered Starscream watching from the sidelines, glowering, growing more unsettled with each passing moment. Clearly, this Autobot ritual had annoyed him.

Prime had been torn then, whether to be seen with Starscream or not. It a way he'd wanted not to keep him locked up like he was a prisoner, wanted to give him the same freedoms as any of his soldiers. Wanted to show Starscream the greater part in Prime's life, a life aside from fleeting moments snatched up when no-one was around.

With all the speeches and songs, Prime hadn't been able to spend much attention on Starscream - their liaison had been still mostly secret back then. He'd seen Starscream talking to Gears, and an energon-drunk Perceptor, and then he'd gone.

Was that where Starscream had been lost to him? Had he grown impatient waiting for Prime, had he gone back to Perceptor's berth up on the Ark's exposed bulkhead? Had Starscream revealed his protoflesh to Perceptor? Had they fucked up there while Prime was cornered by droning Senators?

Prime inhaled, tried to ease out the pain of his metaskeleton. Every movement followed him with a low-grade hurt. He could not think more than a few minutes before his traitorous mind circled back to _him_. Imagined Starscream responding to Perceptor's gentle touches, the smooth immaculate armour, his Alpha-caste propriety.

Anger and despair, anger and despair, and Prime caught in a pendulum swing between the two. He counted a hundred revolutions around the Ark before stopping, then pacing again. Even the ever-ebullient Jazz began to suspect more to Prime's agitation and let him be.

Nights were the worst. He had thought that it had been bad enough thinking of Starscream and Perceptor together, but now that he had nobody, he had nothing to think of. His protomass was like the extrusions of a dying thing, and he was just an empty shell constructed around it.

There was no escaping his injury. He would have to see Ratchet.

From the very beginning Ratchet had known when Prime had begun his illicit couplings with their not-prisoner. Bodysex had been such a new experience. Prime had worried if either he or his partner could be hurt by it. Were there contamination issues, like there were between humans and their diseases? Could Autobots and Decepticons properly interface in that way without damage?

The medic was helpfully informative right up until he'd realized who Prime's partner was.

"He is a Decepticon, Optimus!" Ratchet had said, mortified. "He doesn't even _think _like you or I do. Nothing in his circuitry matches what we are."

Prime tried to justify himself with false rationalization. "We need to learn as much about them as we can, if we are to win this war," he said, "We need to understand how deep Decepticon influence goes."

Ratchet never lost the dark glower in his optics.

"You don't have to stoop to his level, Prime. One of the reasons Autobots condemn bodysex is the problems it can cause. The jealousy, the arguments, the destabilization of entire platoons because of this Decepticon habit! Sparksex has no secrets, and don't tell me you're sharing that with him too."

Prime shook his head, even then feeling older-than-old. "They don't allow such intimacy between themselves. That much I have learnt."

"Then learn not to dally with him Prime! You're too important. Have one of the other 'bots indulge Starscream in his Decepticon behaviours if it is so important to keep him happy!"

The words came out, so easily. "Ratchet, you are a good and wise friend, and I will consider what you have said."

But those were words said in the bright day, and the night-time had brought Starscream. The dark brought hot memory-metal segueing into a plasma of nanoparticles, Starscream's mouth whispering words in their enemy's tongue that were not meant to be spoken to an enemy. The liquid fall of Prime's joints on overload, the sharp terrible pleasure of electrical potential arcing through him, the spasm of electron release...these were things that Starscream gave him that no other 'bot could.

And afterwards he would talk in the darkness, foolish things, things not befitting of a Matrix Bearer. Things he could barely say to himself and would never say to one of his own, those secrets locked up in his spark for a thousand years. His enemy, his hated adversary, would listen in silence. No commendation, no murmurs of shock or disappointment. Starscream had no preconceptions of what a _Prime_ should be. Optimus could be strong, Optimus could be vulnerable, it was all the same to him.

Prime could not have lied to Ratchet. He only told the truth by omission. Yes, he would consider Ratchet's request. He would consider not mass-sharing when Starscream's quick shadow flitted to his doorway, dim lights casting yellow hot-spots across the striking colours of his wings.

He would consider it when Starscream said, "It makes no difference, if the Matrix speaks or not. It's only an Autobot affectation. You are real."

Perhaps Starscream never knew why his words had such an affect on Prime. Or perhaps he did know, saying the very things that would bring him to his knees. _I will conquer him._He had been conquered.

Then Starscream would invite Prime to touch him again, to peel back the plating of his groin and belly, reveal the dark protoform flesh that was not metal, not liquid, not anything less than particle-stasis energy and dark matter and the stuff of spark and universe.

Prime would release his own protomass into that tight space, grind himself there with cries of gratitude and relief and a hundred strange emotions and consider Ratchet's request as his body jerked in overload, and static electricity made rainbows on his antennae. He would consider it when he pressed Starscream's spent body to him, the smaller mech shaking with tiny aftershocks.

And now Ratchet saw him as a product of all he had experienced and lost, as he stepped into the medic bay.

Ratchet saw Prime, and straight away knew.

"You did it. I told you not to be with him, and you went ahead anyway."

"Ratchet, don't make this any harder on me."

Of all the mechs he had ever known as _Optimus_, it was Ratchet whom he'd known longest. The medic had been there when he first opened his optics, standing next to Alpha Trion. Although he would later come to remember the clenched, exhausted and anxious face as being a mech under tremendous pressure, Ratchet was rarely one to be preoccupied for long.

"What's done is done," said Ratchet with a sigh. "He's gone now, and be thankful you're still alive. It could have been a disaster if he'd tried to do anything else other than wheedle a few secrets out of Perceptor and yourself."

Prime covered his face with his hands.

At first Ratchet ignored him and went about the business of shortening an armour-splint, but Ratchet could not be cold for long, either.

"Yes, I know. It hurts. I told you it would. And if you are lucky maybe it will go away. And if you are not..."

"What then?"

He shrugged, affected hardness. "You want to know, Optimus? All right then, I'll tell you the truth. I've seen mechs die from losing a bodysex mate. It's rare, but it can be worse than sparkbonding."

Prime stood in the medic rooms like a lump of inert metal, absorbed Ratchet's words.

"You never shared sparks, and you know that he only was with you as an act of deceit. Such a prognosis is good. You may recover."

He could hardly believe Ratchet's lack of empathy. "You talk as if it was some kind of disease."

"You've been infected by deceit. Oh, I know you, Optimus. Starscream whispered words in your audios, I'm sure. Glorious words that tore down the priesthood constructs and made you feel things you never had before. He had your number from the day he saw you. The Decepticons have made it their mission to figure you out. He would know how to push levers you never knew existed."

"Do you think me a fool, Ratchet? Do you think I haven't considered that?"

"I think you know exactly what you were getting into when you were with him. And here we are."

"Be a medic," he said quietly. "Do something."

"Do what?

"Make me forget."

Ratchet was brusque. "Concentrate on your Sparkbonding ceremony." The dark timbre did not leave his voice. "Regardless of your interpretation, it's meant to be a happy day."

* * *

Later, he had a meeting with Prowl and Jazz on the status of Decepticon activity. "They've been quiet," said Prowl after a recount of their current defences. "Too quiet. Our usual informants aren't talking."

Prime sat at Teletraan One's console and scrolled through a list of scanned frequencies, looking through the chatter for the evidence of Decepticon activity.

"What about Perceptor?" He tried to be casual. The words came out strained.

Jazz made a blurting sound. "That crazy turncoat mech. He's as stubborn as any Alpha. Since being put into the stockade he's refused to talk. Here I was thinking the science-freak would be singing like a bird the moment some pressure was applied, but he's switched off his vocal emitters and put an encryption on it. Guess he must have really liked that stinkin' jet."

Prowl gave Jazz a sideways look. Jazz slapped his hand over his face. "Sorry Prime. But I was fond of him too. I knew what he meant to you." A sudden look of challenge lit up his optics, "I wanted him to be with you."

"Jazz!" exclaimed Prowl.

"It's true," said Jazz. "Primus, I wanted him to be genuine. He let me down too, Prime."

"So Perceptor's not talking?"

"No."

"I want to see him."

"Is that wise?" asked Prowl. "He has been plotting with Starscream for a long time. He would have taken such a capture into account."

"And this is our smartest mech," added Jazz. "He'd know words that would initiate a circuit failure in a 'bot just on speaking them."

Prime nodded. "Despite all that, he's been held in the brig for 3 days, and as far as I know, nobody has questioned him or levelled charges."

"He knows why he's there," said Prowl darkly.

"Then we can talk openly. Take me to him."

* * *

They were reluctant, but what Prime requested, he got. The two 'bots followed Prime deeper into the stern of the Ark, into the reinforced sections where a mech could be kept against his will.

Incarceration was rarer to Autobots than their taking prisoners, but the war did things to processors, sometimes sent software screwy. Sometimes an individual needed a place to freeze down and re-boot. Usually stasis was preferable, but seeing as how Perceptor had built the stasis lock unit and most probably knew a way out of it, all that could be done was put him in a very large cage.

When they arrived at the brig, Wheeljack was standing at the cell, his sad, expressive optics even more so. The other mech was Mirage.

Like any high-born Autobot, Mirage visibly strutted as he approached Prime, laid a possessive hand on his chest. A gesture of intimacy that was not welcome, not now, after he was trying to heal.

"Easy," grumbled Prime. "We aren't paired up yet."

"How's it going Wheeljack?" asked Prowl.

Wheeljack stood to attention.

"He hasn't come out of his alt-mode. I've tried to talk to him but he won't..."

"It's not your fault." said Prime. He saw Wheeljack's miserable expression. "I know you were close to him."

"He is...was my good friend."

"Perhaps he only needs to talk to the right people. Isn't that right, Perceptor?"

To an outsider, all that they would have seen was a reinforced metal cage containing some kind of scientific device. If one were to ask what Perceptor's alt-mode was, he'd have bluntly said _microscope_. Even then, that could mean anything from an MRI to a CT scanner or even an electron tunnelling microscope. Perceptor was cunning in the ways he interacted with humans, sometimes posting himself to surprised university departments as a donated piece of expensive research equipment, only to walk away when he'd discovered all he needed to.

Prime leant on the metal bars. "I know you've been waiting for me."

Perceptor transformed. Prime watched him in silence as the shards rearranged themselves into the small, solid mech. He had not been constructed through soldier's lines, but an Alpha caste. He was like Mirage, cleanly symmetrical, old-type handsome.

Prime watched him for a moment longer, and the image of Starscream and Perceptor intruded, unwanted, uninvited. What had they shared? Sparksex? Bodysex? Had Perceptor ever felt the same raw rush of sensation from Starscream's protoflesh, seen him during the throes of overload? What had they shared?

"Are you going to stare at me, or are you going to talk?" Perceptor was surly.

"I think we shall talk."

"Congratulations on your Sparkbonding, by the way."

"I doubt you mean that."

Perceptor wiggled his jaw. "No, I guess I don't." He looked across at Mirage. "But you will always remember that the Senators came to me first."

Mirage and Perceptor glared at each other through the bars of the cage. Their antipathy made the strip-lighting sizzle and buzz.

"How's Hound, by the way?" Perceptor said, sharply. "I heard he's not staying around for the celebration."

"Shut up, traitor, you're not fit to-" Mirage stopped when Prime nudged the blue Autobot. "Okay," he whispered, "don't get involved."

Mirage folded his arms and pouted. Prime returned to the prisoner.

"Do you know why you're here, Perceptor?"

A pause, as if debating an answer. "No."

It was unlikely. Perceptor was smart. Well then, they would play this charade. "Nobody has told you?"

"Oh, they tell me that I've something to do with a Decepticon plot, ask me all sorts of strange questions, but for the past year I've been sitting in this base looking at my rocks." He darted a look at Mirage. "Hound brought me several back from Iran. Epics. Sumerian love-songs baked in clay."

"Shut up," growled Mirage in Alpha dialect. "You don't understand-"

"Stop," said Prime, pushing his way between the two mechs. "Perceptor, you can drop the pretence. We know. About you and Starscream. What you spoke of. What you were planning."

A wave of shock passed over Perceptor's features, quickly suppressed, but not fast enough. Optics narrowed, and Perceptor was wary.

"You know nothing."

"Wheeljack," said Prime. "Play the recordings."

Wheeljack murmured his apologies, and flashed Perceptor a hurt expression.

"I didn't want to do this Percy, but Mirage asked it of me."

"Wheeljack!" scolded Mirage.

"Just play it," grated Prime, weary beyond strength now.

Perceptor stood motionless as he listened to his voice in broken Decepticon.

In Decepticon: _I will help you, because I love you...we will find supporters. There are those who will align with you, for there are those who have wanted a change. They have admired your strength above all others, if we win their alliance, they will challenge the Elders...you will be victorious..._Wheeljack repeated the conversation in Autobot, voice cracking as if it were himself condemned.

"Oh," said Perceptor. "Oh."

"There is more," said Prowl. He dropped his reserve and cried out, "Why, Perceptor? You were our colleague, our friend! Why would you encourage such a thing? In a Decepticon of all mechs?"

"You think I was _wrong_ to do it? You think I didn't tell Starscream he was crazy?" His optics settled on Prime, hot enough to melt armour. "Yes, in the end I came to agree with him. His arguments made sense to me. We needed change."

"Why?" croaked Prime, sparkbroken. Why Perceptor, of all mechs, Perceptor who had fought by his side, who had given up his caste to be an Autobot?

Perceptor took a step forward. "Did you ask Starscream why?"

"Of course we asked him!" Mirage shouted. "The traitor merely fled. Be certain that we have scouts combing the mesa valley right now looking for him-"

"Mirage!" Prime barked.

Mirage backed off.

"Did you ever talk to Starscream, Prime?" said Perceptor in a low, warning voice, "Or did you merely use his body as a repository for all that you would never do to an Autobot? He was once a leader. Now, he cannot even have that respect. You never deserved him."

Fingers that Prime had threaded through the cage now tightened, and the metal creaked audibly.

"What I need to know Perceptor, is what you two were planning." Prime had to speak through clenched jaws to stop himself from shouting. "What you told Starscream about us, and what he intends doing with it when he returns to his people."

An odd expression passed over Perceptor's features, a eureka moment married to a crushing despair. "What we were planning. Oh, it all makes sense, now."

"Speak, Perceptor, Primus-damn you!" Prime's anger, even damped down, was terrible.

Perceptor cast a dismissive glance over all of them. "You would like to know, wouldn't you?" Perceptor was letting some of his scientific reserve slip - he was respiring hard, his optics wide and indignant. "Tell me what you said to Starscream first, when you told him you'd discovered his _plot_."

"He told him he was a traitor!" Mirage interjected. Prime fought the urge to push him out the door.

"I told him I was disappointed," Prime's growl was all subsonics and fractured phonemes. "I told him that I had given him sanctuary here, that it pained me that he should ask for more."

Perceptor's face took on a pinched expression. "Oh, my poor Star." Perceptor levelled cold optics at Prime. "I think perhaps that yes, you deserve what is coming to you."

"And what is that?" Mirage shrieked.

"After the Ceremony. You'll know. Oh yes Prime, you'll know, and you'll understand how little you knew him, no matter how many times you spilt your mass into his body."

The other 'bots gasped at Perceptor's crude speech.

"How dare he," hissed Mirage, "speak of such depravities!"

Before Prime could demand that Perceptor explain further, the science-bot transformed into a torus of magnetic metal, and might have well been a stone for all the life he showed.

* * *

"They planned something. During the Ceremony." Prowl paced the floor of the War Room, hands behind his back, brow furrowed in thought. "I can see the logic in it. Your spark would be exposed, and vulnerable. Which in turn would mean the Matrix - exposed outside of the Celestial Temple... it would be an unprecedented opportunity. The Decepticons have wanted to do away with you for a long time."

"Yes," said Prime, wearily. "Give me your recommendations."

"I think that in all probability it means we should cancel the Sparkbonding, at least until Starscream is found, or Perceptor talks."

Mirage was beside himself. "We can't cancel the Sparkbonding!"

"It's not just us," said Jazz. "There will be humans there, too. If it were an attack, or an explosion, they would be injured."

"Then we'll tell the humans not to come!" Mirage stomped his foot. "This is not a Ceremony for them."

Prime shifted from where he'd been leaning against Teletraan One. "We share their planet, Mirage. It would be remiss of us not to invite a human delegation."

"Then we'll return to Cybertron. Have a bonding in the Great Hall of the Ancients, the Celestial Temple."

"No," said Prime. "That's out of the question."

"Then make Perceptor talk! Surely a spark-interrogation can be effected."

Wheeljack shook his head. "In the alt-mode he's in, he'd need to be taken apart piece by piece to reveal his spark, and then it might already be extinguished by the time we got to it."

"So we're kinda screwed," grumbled Jazz.

"Maybe not. Perceptor wouldn't put himself in danger, or all the information in his memory." Wheeljack tapped his head. "Information is precious to us science-bots. We'd never put ourselves in harm's way if it might erase our memory."

"Meaning what, exactly?" Prowl stopped his endless pacing.

"Whatever the threat is, it's significantly less because we are holding the Ceremony here. Look, the Cybertronians start arriving through the space-bridge in a few hours. We should just stop worrying and get ready."

Prime left them to argue the merits and locations of the Ceremony, and privately wondered how much he would mind if something did just explode while his spark was exposed. Would it be such a tragedy? Perhaps once back in the All-Spark, he would be free. Mirage barely noticed him go, so it wasn't as if _Optimus_ factored in Mirage's concerns for Bonding.

Like any Alpha, to be considered elite, to have status and a high place in the Cybertron hierarchy was the most important thing in Mirage's life. Becoming an Autobot had been so hard on him. Prime had felt sorry for Mirage, felt kinship, for in a way they had both been disappointments to their people. He had even turned a blind optic to the fledgling relationship with Hound, their forward scout, when such relationships were frowned upon.

So now Hound was discarded, and Mirage was back within the Alpha fold.

Prime wondered what it would be like, to live Bonded with such an individual, to whom love counted for so little and ambition so much. Possibly not like anything. He would become as automated as a sentinel on its lonely ledge. By sunrise the first of the rituals would begin, and Prime's individuality would be subsumated into another's.

His quarters seemed too bare. The berth yawned too empty where once it had taken the span of their bodies, the hot press of Prime's desire, Starscream's wings scraping the walls as he had shook in overload. His sense memory still ached, Starscream's hands on his back, thighs on his hips, that Decepticon voice taut with climax, his name spoken in the same way Prime would cry the name of his dead and forgotten god.

Prime had to leave. An old shoulder injury pained him. He stumbled down the main corridor, sick with longing, before finding an alcove, a private place. He pressed his forehead to the Ark's metal skin.

_Oh Primus, Starscream,_" he whispered to the wall. _I don't care if you didn't love me. To have been with you was enough._"Optimus, who are you talking to?"

Startled, Prime turned around, then looked down at the human. He'd only scanned for mechs, not organics, and had not realized that he was not alone.

"Spike..."

It was late, and the adolescent human shouldn't normally have been roaming the halls of the Ark.

"Who were you talking to," asked Spike. "Is there someone else here? Mirage?" Invisibility and camouflage was a given with some mechs. Human eyes could only see armour, and a spark-child was invisible to an organic's eyes.

Prime shook his head. "We sometimes talk to ourselves when we are troubled."

"Are you troubled?"

"Always," said Prime. "It is called being a leader."

"And getting Bonded."

"That too."

"Like getting married. Um, that's what us humans do."

Prime exhaled, didn't want to correct the boy and tell him it was not like that at all.

"Where's your guardian?"

Spike rubbed at a patch of grease on his cheek. "We were driving out on the valley, and I think we hit a piece of scrap metal or something. Sliced open 'Bee's undercarriage. Ratchet's seeing to him. I want to be around when he's out of stasis...I guess I'm kind of troubled too."

Prime nodded and took a place next to the boy. There were some older humans who had disagreed with their keeping a youngster in close proximity - Spike had still been a human child when they had arrived. Ratchet had gone slightly crazy in repeating himself - developmentally children were more useful than adults. Linguists and anthropologists alone couldn't learn their ways, and in all the planets they'd contacted, it was the younger members of the species who had proved more adaptable.

"Then let us wait for Bumblebee together," said Prime.

Spike upturned a crate and boosted himself onto it. He heaved a ragged breath. "When I saw that silvery stuff come out of him, I thought he was going to die."

"That is protomass."

"Like blood?"

"Like blood, like information transfer, like a medium to cool and heat our bodies, reduce friction. Our surface areas and masses change as we transform. Mass and energy doesn't disappear, but it can be altered."

"If he lost a lot of mass?"

"He might not have enough to come out of his alt-mode. Practical as it is to have a disguise, we cannot take in fuel energy in that form."

Spike nodded. Then, "Is Perceptor really in prison?"

"He is in the brig, yes."

"Oh. He was teaching me Decepticon."

_Ah, Primus. _"Was he?"

"He said you guys couldn't speak it. He said it was almost impossible for an Autobot to learn properly, and that he was experimenting with having a human learn." Spike looked glum. "So why did you have to lock him up?"

"Perceptor is wise in many arts. But perhaps not in the political ones."

Spike shook his head, not understanding. But he was a child. The time would come when such things he would know and have to figure out for himself.

"I guess I'll have to find another native speaker. Starscream-"

"Is gone," said Prime abruptly.

"Oh. He wasn't friendly. I mean, up until last week."

"Last week?" Tried not to be curious. But he was curious. What did Starscream possibly have to say to one of these _despised_ humans?

"He taught me a song."

"A song?"

"I didn't know Decepticons had songs either, but they do. Uh, it goes like this."

Spike took out a small piece of metal from the pocket of his coveralls, a red whistle with a click chamber. Hesitantly he executed a series of chirrs and clicks, like a magnetic tape recording of a bird and a modem mixed, stretched, and run backwards. Prime recognized the Decepticon accents on all the notes, knew that it had come from a true speaker, not an Autobot.

Spike stopped.

"I want to sing it to Carly. Kind of romantic, and she likes the real exotic mech stuff."

The atmosphere seemed to have grown heavier. Or perhaps it was the gravity. Prime was sure of it. Nothing else could explain the sensation of his protomass sinking into his lower thorax, as if he were just about to be told something he didn't want to know.

"Did he translate the words for you?"

"Yeah, uh... something like _my processors are burned black/my spark aches/not to be near you/like a wall you are to me/a fortress impenetrable/but the time will come when I will conquer you/you will kneel before me and all shall know/what is mine yours/yours, mine/our sparks will be one/I will be victorious_... There was all this other stuff. Can't remember. They're wild on the war metaphors, those Decepticons, even in love songs."

The sinking feeling intensified, as if he were dragging the protomass off his metaskeleton.

_...the time will come when I will conquer you...you will kneel before me..._"Spike, did you spend much time with Perceptor?"

"Sure, when I wasn't with Bumblebee. Stanford University gives me credits towards a degree if I do a paper for them on alien languages."

"What would you say his relationship with Starscream was?"

A shrug. "Oh, I don't know. Like scientists I guess. They spoke mostly in Decepticon. Perceptor thought it important to learn, he was always saying, 'Spike, you have to learn this'. He kept trying to teach Starscream some High Autobot, but the meanings are all different across you guys' languages. No wonder you've all been at war so long."

An idea had broken from its moorings inside the information wash of his neural networks, and was spinning around, crashing into previously secure constructs and breaking them open.

"An example?"

Spike was flustered. "Gosh Optimus, it's getting late. Like...okay then. Love."

"Love?" Roaring in his ears, like a pair of JATOs at full blast next to his head.

"Yeah, see the Autobot word is ++love++," Spike used his click-whistle to enunciate the word, "and Perceptor says it means a brotherly fealty. More friendship and camaraderie than human love. The Decepticon //love// means to...well, Perceptor explained it as being subjugated, kind of imprisoned by another against your wishes. A weakness. You'll never hear the word //love// in a Decepticon love song, you know? I doubt they even have a word as we know it in their vocabulary."

Prime was silent as Spike continued, "- so this is why Decepticons and Autobots are so different. Even their languages don't translate the same."

"Prime!"

He snapped out of his information freefall to see Mirage standing in the doorway, a triumphant smile across his noble face.

"The sun rises," said Mirage. "Our Sparkbond day has come."

From down the corridor came the distant whine and thwop of helicopters landing, the first human delegations arriving.

Mirage flashed a grin and left them. Spike gave Prime a buddy-punch on his shin, the only part of him he could reach.

"Good on you big guy. Carly will think it's great when I tell her that robots can fall in ++love++." He paused, and said wistfully, "And I mean ++love++, not //love// because who in their right mind would want to feel that?"

* * *

TBC


	4. Remember

Four: Remember

* * *

Sometimes, despite all the excitement that living on the Ark gave a soldier of the sacred Autobot army, despite being the centre of everything and the hub of all their activity on Earth, there were downsides, and one of them was being placed on guard duty during one of the most important days in Cybertronian history.

That was not to say his job was an insignificant duty - the traitor Perceptor was Prisoner Number One and guarding him was not to be charged to any ordinary individual - but Gears still yearned to be present at a real Prime Sparkbonding.

For all his bad temper there was a sentimental side to Gears. He had never met anyone he'd ever wanted to Sparkbond with, but he could still understand that emotion, and still find vicarious joy in other Bondings. A small part of him that was not bitter and war-worn appreciated the idea of two (or three as it had been known) mechs who would choose each other to exalt above all others. What a validation of oneself as an identity!

Jazz and Prowl. Now there had been a night. Not so long ago he'd watched as Optimus Prime officiated the ceremony with the proper solemn authority, giving his permission for the two mechs to become one, as it was in the time of the All-Spark, and as it would be at the end of all days.

Prowl had been uncharacteristically anxious, his armour vibrating to a discordant harmonic. Then Jazz had sung the Bonding song in High Autobot, that most difficult and beautiful of languages, and Prowl visibly relaxed. All was right with them. They would no longer be alone.

Despite his dour specs, Gears had been moved by the soaring of resonant notes, the plaintive declaration of worship. Even the few invited humans suffered leaky optics over it. The human girl, Carly, had exclaimed, "Even I'd marry him!"

Gears speculated on the Song Mirage would sing today. Something staid and proper, something like _A rEquest I bEseech oF tHee_ or some other funereal kind of piece that one would expect an Elder or a Thaumaturge to sing, but then a Prime Bonding was no place for theatrics or anything controversial. No war shanties or Insect-Aspect shrilling there, just straight Tradition.

Gears was old enough to remember Nova Prime's Bonding with the God Soldier, Paraselene, and could just about recall Nemesis Prime's Bonding to Ultra Magnus, but these were mere benchmarks in their history. This Bonding was important. It was said that after Nova Prime, the Matrix of Leadership had almost been lost to them. Not until Optimus Prime did the Autobots crawl back from the brink.

As with all Ceremonies there would be a recess after the Song, purely ceremonial, but once had a true purpose - for the Elders to debate the appropriateness of the pairing. Since in this age of war, Autobots could decide for themselves whom they wished to be with, so the recess became a time to mingle, get drunk on energon, and have what Jazz liked to call "a bitchin' good time."

A good time, when so many times were not good. When so many had been lost. And Bondings were so rare now with mechs afraid to pair up in case their other half was lost, the majority preferring the quick soul-swaps of sparksex.

Gears had had somewhat of a good time at the Jazz-Prowl Bonding, hardly "bitchin'", but the energon was sweet, and unusually plentiful in this time of constant rationing, and he would have had a better time if he hadn't been saddled with Starscream.

Recess had hardly started when the Autobots had begun grouping up and excluding him. Even Hound, who was always reliable in these annoying situations, was sidling up next to Mirage, whom Gears had never warmed to. Not that Gears ever warmed to anyone, but the worst part of social gatherings was the chore of having to actually socialize. He hated the way status could be confirmed by the company one kept, and Gears ended up trapped in a corner with the one individual the others tried to avoid as well.

Starscream. He wasn't too happy about the inference.

"I see you're not popular with your friends," the Decepticon traitor had sneered.

"Likewise," Gears had snapped back. "Besides, I didn't think I'd see you at a Sparkbonding Ceremony. Aren't you supposed to be locked up?"

Starscream had hissed at him.

"I'm allowed some scientific curiosity."

_Decepticon curiosity, you mean_, Gears wanted to say. But he could be curious as well. "So, do you Decepticons Sparkbond?"

Starscream only scoffed. Then, unexpectedly, "Why bother with some stupid ceremony at all, if everyone is aware of your couple status?"

The dismissal of their most important tradition made Gears mad, and his temper was volatile to start with. "Sparkbonding isn't for _everyone_, you emotionless automaton!" screeched Gears, spilling energon on the floor. "Sparkbonding is the ultimate expression of respect between two individuals. Anyone can have sparksex, but to have another living thing declare you a part of themselves...there is no greater Autobot honour."

He'd expected Starscream to hurl back another snide comment as to the inanity of Autobot customs, but instead the traitor had only looked back over to where Jazz and Prowl were standing with Prime, and his red optics had narrowed in thought. Jazz had been animated and happy. The normally staid Prowl had his hands on Jazz's waist, an expression of gratitude and reverence on his regal face.

"Honour..."

"Of course a Decepticon wouldn't understand that," Gears went on, drunk now and unable to stop himself. "With your kind's filthy habit of-" a wince, "Mass sharing. Bodysex."

"I'm sure there's an Autobot precedence to sharing mass."

From a couple of still-sober processors Gears imagined he heard a warning note in Starscream's words.

"Oh, of course, with whores from a Cybertron Dead End conduit. Maybe. If you could find one degraded enough to go that far. No self-respecting Autobot would subject a loved partner to such a humiliating act. You disgust us. Such a thought."

Starscream had stalked off on him then, and Gears had gotten drunk, and tried to pick a fight with Blurr, and had woken up in a berth in Ratchet's medical bay with a smashed optic and a dented shoulder-plate.

His opportunity to ruminate further stopped with the servo-whine of the brig door opening.

He stood to attention. "Who's there?"

Prime ducked as he entered the room so as not to catch his antennae in the lintel. Gears tried not to stare. He'd had little to do with Optimus Prime before arriving on the Ark, but even after campaigns fought together, Gears was still cowed in the great Autobot's presence. The descriptions of Prime had never done him justice, this massive, battle-scarred warrior. There was nothing physically attractive about him, nothing beautiful, nothing pleasing to an aesthetic eye. Everything about him suggested a tempered violence, crude functionality, a mech built for a life of war. His body had been ravaged by shrapnel and fire, torture and dispute.

The Autobot Elders had chosen a Prime to be equal in intimidation to Megatron, a last-gasp symbol of defiance. They were interested only in a legacy back then, knowing that their kind was about to be wiped out by the Decepticons and wanting to leave one last, terrible memory.

They had never expected Optimus to win.

And now here he was, taking a further step in the reparation of their once-great culture. Which made his being _here_ being unexpected.

"Prime, sir. Uh...I thought you were getting Bonded."

"And I thought you were supposed to be guarding the prisoner, not daydreaming."

Gears trembled. Prime would never hurt him, but one would fear his censure. Just the thought of that raw power turned upon him...

"Sorry, sir...it's just that I think he's gone into self-stasis...I think."

"Leave us."

Gears left, and lingered outside the airlock, unsure how far away Prime meant for him to go.

Prime looked through the cage and at the sullen torus that lay on the floor.

"If I can't get you animated, I should consider sending you off to a hospital that needs an MRI."

No reply from the torus. But Prime knew Perceptor was listening. The mech wouldn't turn off his mind completely.

"You were teaching Spike some Decepticon, am I right?"

They were radioing him now, calling him. He heard Ironhide saying in the background, "Dang it, he's not allowed to be fashionably late on these occasions."

With slow steps he circumnavigated the cage.

"Tell me, why would a human boy need to know the differences between '_love'_ in three different languages? It strikes me as an odd thing for a scientist."

"Uh, Prime," said Gears from the door. "They're asking all of us if we've seen you..."

"Don't tell them I'm here, or I'll have you doing sentinel duty for the rest of the decade," Prime grated.

The words must have been what Perceptor was waiting for. With a cracking of nuclear forces the torus sprung open, a puddle of protometal rearranging into shards and tessellations of metaskeleton, the mass filling the space until Perceptor took his anthro form. His head was last to arrive, pale Alpha-caste face and a cap of hard gunmetal-black.

"I never thought you'd go this far, Optimus. Missing a Sparkbonding to interrogate me. Maybe I underestimated you."

Prime couldn't tell if Perceptor was being sarcastic. His Earth language skills were better than most.

"You said you wanted me to find out something. That I deserved to know after I'd been Bonded."

Perceptor shrugged.

"Let's talk about love then. You loved Starscream. The recordings said it..."

"Mirage and his snooping. That arrogant blue 'bot is so ambitious he'd try and find a weakness in any of us."

Perceptor tilted his head in disdain, maybe forgetting that he was of the same caste as Mirage, an Alpha, and could be haughty at times too. "Starscream was always going to be a threat to his goal of Sparkbonding to a Prime, to the Matrix."

"Why would he consider Star that? I hadn't chosen anyone at that point, and Starscream was a Decepticon-"

Perceptor hurled himself at the cage. The metal wailed under tension. "That's right, Starscream was a Decepticon! And you treated him like one! Made him mass-share, when he knew that it was indecent to our kind, an act of degradation. Wanted sparksex from him and never considered, not once _considered_ that he might want the option of Sparkbonding first?"

"But they don't Sparkbond. He wouldn't understand..."

"Oh, he understood. He understood respect. He understood that he was a Leader once, and feared, and deferred to, and he understood how far he had sunk here. Less than Prime's lover, but chattel, a spoil of war!"

Flashback of Starscream's anguished wail: _Since being here I have suffered the ignominy, the shame of being a prisoner and Prime's whore_ and Prime pressed his hand to his forehead, and the transmissions of _where are you Prime, everyone's waiting_ were loud, loud, and he didn't want to know any of that, because the answers were coming, but they weren't going to be like keys opening locks, but great bludgeons smashing down.

Perceptor rested his cheek to the cage, face close to Prime's.

"Despite all that," he added softly, "He still always hoped that you'd break with tradition. Maybe even ask him to Sparkbond."

"Sparkbond?" Prime croaked. Nothing was making sense. He had never experienced Starscream except in the way one might experience joy in the face of despair - something immediate, to be consumed utterly in defiance of the yawning emptiness before and behind. He'd never dared to consider permanence, never put himself in that place where all hopes go to die.

"I thought it was stupid," Perceptor continued with a hollow laugh. "I tried to tell him that it wouldn't be like like Prowl and Jazz, because that's all he'd seen, those two. He didn't know our culture, didn't know how a Prime Sparkbonding is a political manifestation, a loveless act. But Starscream always was ambitious to the point of blindness. Couldn't be told a thing was impossible. That faith is infectious. You can tell why he's a leader, why the Decepticons follow him, why Megatron kept him as his Second for so long.

"I said, '_I'll go along with it because I ++love++ you,'_ love in the Autobot way, the fealty of friendship and brotherhood. I told him that if he shared a Prime Spark he would be like a Prime by proxy himself and some might not accept it...but some would, because our planet is rotting, and broken, and if we don't change, we'll all die. Oh, he was adamant that nothing was going to stop him."

Perceptor irised shut his optics, heaved a great sigh. "Star was delusional. He was in love with you, that stupid mech. What does a Prime know about love? You were made only to fight and kill. I saw it coming, the day you announced your intention to bond with Mirage. I saw how it broke him. You should have seen his face, Prime, when he found out. I knew that when you took him to the sentinel-ledge, he would not come back."

Prime grabbed the cage. He willed himself to stay upright. "He never said anything to me..."

But hadn't he? Had Starscream been speaking all along and Prime not listening, or hearing only what he wanted to hear?

The optics opened, and Perceptor looked sideways at Prime. "Call me stupid, but I half expected him to die out there. I knew there were those who wanted to be rid of him."

"Prime," Gears was back at the door. "They're coming this way. Prowl looks pissed."

Prime clung to the cage, dizzy with horror as he dredged up the memory from the sentinel-ledge, the way Starscream had been so hesitant to mass-share, and Prime had taken him anyway, because he was so much larger and what was the use in struggling?

_Don't deny me this_.

_You raped him out there, Prime, you had promised yourself to another and took him because you felt you had a right, because you owned him, a spoil of war._Remember Starscream's optics, swimming with betrayal and hurt.

Remember the stain of Prime's rape silver-marking his exoskeleton.

Remember the way his shaking hand grabbed up sand, the way he tried to clean himself off, the way the other mechs had looked at him when they all arrived, ready to kill him. What would Starscream have thought? That they all knew what Prime had done and blamed him instead?

Prime heard his voice, so utterly cruel in hindsight: _Why would you want any more?_"What have I done?" he whispered.

"Driven him away. To die most probably. A mech like that can't synthesize his own energon. Most likely he'll starve out in the desert, or go back to his own people, and we know too well how they deal with traitors." Perceptor sat back on his heels. His still, scientist's face showed no emotion, but his shoulders were resonating like wires under high tension.

"Now you may Sparkbond with Mirage, and I hope this haunts you."

Behind them, Prowl appeared in the doorway, polished to within an inch of his life and decorated with the gold braids of his station as Second in charge to a Prime.

"Prime, everyone's ready."

For a second he didn't move, then pulled away from the cage. Time to begin the long walk to Sparkbonding, _Spark-extinguishing_.

Perceptor's optics did not leave him.

* * *

TBC


	5. Who is your Lord?

* * *

Five: Who Is Your Lord?

* * *

"It is time," said Prowl, solemn and sad, "time to do your duty, time to give yourself up to a higher purpose. After tonight you will never be alone, you will never live as a singular being, you will have another's spark in you, always."

The Ark's central corridor had never seemed so long. Each step was taking him further away from himself. Would he still be the same after he had bonded? Would he still think about Starscream with this disjointed ache, or would those strange days and nights they'd spent be repartitioned as bad sectors in a life, something to be contained and erased?

Would he still regret every little thing he'd ever said and done?

He had destroyed Starscream. Loved something and destroyed it. _You should have seen his face..._

Another part of him was cool. He'd done worse to Decepticons. He'd killed them, torn limbs from their bodies, run his sword through their spark. All he'd done to Starscream was break a promise and let him go.

Perceptor was right. He had only been constructed for hate and war.

"I wonder Prowl, if it wouldn't be easier just to go back to Cybertron and give them back the Matrix."

The static in Prowl's voice belied the warrior's calm manner, the suggestion that were they alone, he would be shouting. "Maybe it would be, since you lost sight of what it is to be a Leader. To be our leader, ours, built by Alpha Trion and given ultimate authority by Emirate Xaaron. You belong to all of us, Optimus. We need someone to look up to, a living Prime!"

"They worship the Matrix, not me!"

Prowl stopped, properly angry now. The strip-lights gleamed off his polished armour like scars. "Slag it Prime, is there a difference? I have given my allegiance to three Primes, and lived through the reign of four. I only believe in you."

Prime exhaled. Prowl always knew the details of his station, even if Prime chose not to. His Second had fought too many battles, been on too many front lines. The political machinations of the Elders, the constant pressure of the Alpha-bots to maintain their status, the clamour of the Empties, those mechs who had chosen no side, these were arguments Prowl had chosen to stay out of.

"I know you don't have any feelings for Mirage," continued Prowl, "and perhaps that is the best thing if he is to take up residence on Cybertron on your behalf. But you need to show him the respect of that station."

Guilt, and even a small measure of defiance made Prime say, "He gave up Hound for this."

"That's a big sacrifice. You need to respect that."

"Where is Hound? How's he doing?"

"It's not the time. Prime, they're singing your music."

"Please Prowl, Hound is kin and caste to you...is he all right? Is he well?"

"He's not Starscream," hissed Prowl, knowing where the argument was going. "He will do what is right, retire and find his proper mech sense. None of this atavistic emotional rubbish. "

"Are you so mechanical with Jazz? Or does your Beast Moiety only come out when you're with him?"

His door-wings shivered with indignation. "It's different."

"Is it?"

"I'm not a Prime. The soul of Primus doesn't live in my spark."

Prime gave Prowl a low look. Prowl shook his head and resumed his march down the corridor.

The noise of three hundred gathered Autobots of the highest rank, and a hundred more humans reached them. The central corridor's hollow acoustics funnelled sound and scent. Human fear-pheromones were like plaintive little cries among the scent-shouts of protomass and lubricant. Prowl escorted Prime though the ship's spine and deep into the Ark's belly, the buried section, the colder places, the only open space in the Ark large enough for such a gathering. The buried hangar, where Prime had first met Starscream, seen him up close, seen him lying on the floor, red optics flashing hate.

All Prime's senses were alive to memory. He was crowded, assaulted, overwhelmed. _See him under you, Prime, back arched, how his crimson excitement cast glowing pools on the bulkhead wall, see the way he first chewed down energon gels with suspicion and gratitude roiling in his dark, expressive face, his first meal in a week, then how he threw up all over your feet, his systems having gone into shut-down mode because he was starving._

He would be starving now, oh Primus, and it was his fault.

The hangar was warmer than usual, with the combined heat signatures of engines and transmetal and protoflesh and all the parts in between. A scribble of laser light broke up the dark places, artistic renderings of a million constellations in quinary red shift, lights to lead eyes and optics to the raised section where the ceremony would take place. Once inter-star transports had sat on that platform, sleek and iridescent. Now the desert dust had crept into the ship, through the vents and the conduits, covering everything in a fine patina of crackling age.

Murmurs silenced as Prime walked into the hangar, the transformative layers of his exoskeleton shining. The songs being sung - to human ears only strange sonics and warbles, but to the living mechanical creatures of Cybertron and its colonies, beautiful and yearning - tapered off.

To one side, on a berth-throne of burnished titanium and cybertronium alloy, Emirate Xaaron sat. The Elder was a mech so old that his protomass had lost its transuranic weight and had hardened to mere stable gold, so that he was decrepit and precious at once. He had never rebirthed himself or scavenged mass from other mechs, so his body was the one he'd been sparked with, in the reign of Primon. Even the humans knew of his importance, this hulking gold Autobot who could not transform, misshapen by small war upon small war.

Xaaron rose to his feet when Prime entered, his joints soft and creaking. Beside him Mirage was almost cast into insignificance, until the laser light caught him and tracked his outlines until he glowed in colours in all the spectrum, from microwaves to infrared, from ultra-violet to x-rays.

Those Alphas who were invited had formed their own clique and had taken up positions that gave them the best viewing. Several uninvited Alphas clustered in bright, gleaming knots of undifferentiated protoform in various corners. Most of them were in their original Cybertronian anthro-modes, not for them the transformative disguise of Earth objects. Mirage had always been slumming somewhat by being with the Autobot soldiers. No wonder he had developed the art of disappearing.

Now all was forgiven among his elite peers. No less than a Prime had chosen him. It did not matter now, that this Prime had been one chosen out of desperation and despair. Nor was it an issue that the Alphas had been the ones in the first to argue most vehemently against the Matrix being placed in a living mech rather than rightfully in the Temple. All was forgiven now.

Xaaron raised a regal hand. A low, fearsome hum issued from a lone source, then built as others joined in. Infrasound leitmotifs for the Prime ran at 18.98 hertz twinned with a 17 hertz harmony. Xaaron's ran even deeper. The humans clustered together, stinking of fear and awe. The singing made them uneasy in all kinds of psychological ways.

Xaaron intoned in the newer Autobot language the questing chords, _"Why have I been called here?"_ repeated in an ascending and descending pitch.

"Kind of a 12-bar blues," Jazz had explained to Spike, back when it had been Prime's turn to sing those chords during his and Prowl's sparkbonding.

"_Why do you wish to divide yourself so, when your strength is in your spark unbreached? I cannot allow it, to me you must prove this action's worth."_ Strictly ceremonial, but Xaaron was old enough to recall when once an Elder would have to be physically compelled to attend a bonding ceremony, back when they were not part of mech culture, back when the highest ideal was to be resolute and alone.

Mirage began to sing then, in his pitch perfect voice. He could put some of the true singers to shame.

He started slowly, with elements of the _pRimus aNcient wAits oN aLL,_ before segueing into the intro of _a rEquest I bEseech oF tHee_, and Prime stood and watched him and those repetitive, emotionless tones were measured against Starscream's desperate, hopeless song, the one he'd taught Spike. It did not make matters any better when he picked up Spike and Carly's whispered conversation after Mirage's song had gone into its third repetition, Carly saying "It isn't quite the same as that one you sung for me," and Spike replying, "I think that one was _real_, this is just ceremonial," in the way humans could be ignorant and perceptive all at once.

Mirage was basking in the attention like one made for it and was enjoying himself immensely, and he wasn't going to cut short an abominably long piece for anyone.

When he finally stopped, he turned his broad smile on to Prime as if to say, see, I have exceeded expectations.

As was required of him, Prime nodded and turned to Xaaron. Prime himself had officiated many sparkbondings. How unusual that he should be in this position. He raised his hand to his chest, prepared to sing the rejoinder...

...then a looming wave of dread came upon him, like the world had suddenly shrink-wrapped itself onto his air-intakes and he couldn't breathe. Everyone was watching him, waiting for him to open his chest and reveal his spark and say the words that would lead him to oblivion.

Beside him, a small green Autobot was furiously whispering to Prowl, and Prowl was trying to be discreet and failing, for twenty 'bots left the room in a hurry.

"Prime?" grumbled Xaaron. "No time to be nervous now."

"Yes," said Prime, and every note was like another chip burning out, "With Mirage I concur."

A cheer rose up from the attendant mechs, and the humans clapped, and Mirage looked as if he was going to explode with pride and Xaaron nodded with an ever so slightly sad smile. A heady energon smell filled the hangar as the celebration kicked in. There would be two hours of Recess, then Xaaron would give his approval, and Prime would reveal his spark to Mirage...

He couldn't be here.

Gasping for air, Prime left the hangar, followed the heat trails of the warrior bots who had gone before. Prowl was on his heels, the armour at his back trembling with anxiety. "You better stay back with the ceremony, Optimus. We can take care of this."

"What would _this_ be?"

Prowl didn't want to say it. He paused and coughed, and looked at a wall before sighing, "Some minor Decepticon activity, south of here. The experimental particle accelerator laboratory."

"Are you certain? Humans have a habit of fighting amongst themselves even worse than us."

"It _is_ them. They've never come so close to the Ark before. This may be what Perceptor was alluding to."

Prime did not reply.

"What are you doing here anyway? You need to go back. We can take care of this..."

_Decepticon activity_, thought Prime. Could it mean they were searching for something? The hadron collider would not produce enough energon for any number of Decepticons to seriously consider risking themselves, especially so far from their base. The total output would be barely enough for one.

_Barely enough for one._

If that mech were hungry. If that mech had enough of a science background to be able to operate the machinery.

Sunstreaker arrived, almost as golden as Xaaron. The beautiful Autobot did a double-take on seeing Prime. "Shouldn't you be...?"

Sunstreaker and Prowl exchanged glances. Prowl nodded. Prime felt a golden hand on his arm, a whispered, "Optimus, stay with me, I know this is difficult."

Was his own protomass hardening to a base metal? Was he ready to accept his fate? The smell of energon was obscene in its abundance. It had been a long time since he had starved, and only in the depth of early Autobot campaigns, but he knew that ache as a body cannibalized itself for energy, stripping flesh from metaskeleton, leading to weakness and to death.

He waited until they were alone before pausing. "Sunny," he said, taking up the young mech's chin, "I have to go. I will be away for two hours. Tell the others I am occupied otherwise."

"You're going out to that laboratory." Sunstreaker sounded hurt.

"I have more duties to take care of. I will be back before Recess is over."

Sunstreaker could not have held him. Not when he was vibrating with such sickly excitement, his strength being channelled into places that should only have strength during all the anxieties of war.

The other warrior Autobots had left the Ark, and their contrails blazed a trail across the twilight sky. Prime hefted the rocket pack onto his shoulders.

He was ungainly in the air, directionless, no aerodynamic logic. There had never been a need for Autobots to be airborne, and Cybertron's artificial gravity was not kind to Decepticons, giving the land-based 'bots an advantage. On Earth that advantage was gone, and flight was King. The Aerialbots did their best, Wheeljack's spark-children had been created to challenge Decepticon dominance, but there would never be any real contest.

Starscream's loss to the Decepticons had, on a purely tactical level, hit them hard.

Prime hooked onto the magnetic lines across the planet's surface, followed their distinct patterns. Within minutes he saw the leyline roads that snuck through the desert, the circuitous path of the buried collider, large figure-eight and concentric rings bleached into the soil. There was no evidence of a forceful visit, no smoke, overturned vehicles, no scorch marks.

The JATOS gave out, and he coasted downwards on the remaining velocity, skidding on rocky soil. He barely took a step before his mind commanded, _change_, and his protomass was no longer physical but dark matter and displaced atoms, strangelets and sub-nuclear forces. The transformation hurt, as it always hurt, feeling of having mass sucked from one dimension to another, shoulder-blades detaching from the metaskeletal structure and the first to go into position, the realignment of his arms, his spark folding deeper into his chassis. His sight went off-line as his head descended into his torso, but it was a torso no longer, and his optics were needed no more and the topography lost colour but gained a thousand more details, from the hardness of a stone six feet below the surface, to the play of light across a grain of sand.

Prime drove the rest of the way in alt-mode, dust kicking up from behind him. There was no radio chatter on any channel. So quiet. Even a guard-house was unattended. Automatically he strengthened his exoskeleton, made it more conductive so a blast might arc off him.

He reached the perihelion of the collider track, a massive building with an entranceway too difficult to navigate in his disguise, so he transformed again. The entry hall circled the deep pit where the collider ring itself could be accessed for experiments. He could pick up no life signs in the deep levels of the collider's laboratory, only emptiness.

His senses shrieked and warbled warnings. _This is wrong. This is not a place to be alone._

Time to decide whether to stay or go. He chose to go, to clamber out to the space, put this down as a false alarm.

Then he heard the voice calling him from the blank space. His spark reacted almost before he did. A Decepticon voice, struggling with the Earth language, like metal against metal. Starscream's voice.

"Starscream?" he called, barely hoping against hope.

"It's so dark. I can't move."

Despite his previous hesitation, Prime descended deeper into the dark space. Walkways and gantries impeded his progress. The super-magnets of the collider's accelerating torus did something to his electronics, made them futz and blur.

"Where are you?"

"Here, Optimus."

Prime blinked his optics, and again registered only darkness.

He sent out a blip of sonar and the sound returned with its shapes - a graceful span of wing, the side of Starscream's inscrutable and perfect face. Prime reached out into the darkness. "Primus, Starscream, I thought Megatron had damaged you."

"He only knocked me around. That is his way. I will be fine." The voice seemed oddly distant. An arrogant remoteness that Prime had not heard for a long time.

"We have to get out of here."

In hindsight, if he had been less swallowed up by guilt and more thinking clearly, things might have turned out differently. But when his desperate sonar echolocated the large shape on the ground, the finials and wings and limb-guards that belonged to Starscream, he didn't hesitate to leap the last ten meters and crouch over the fallen body.

A slant of Decepticon crimson. Why was that shade redder than he remembered? He had already slid his hands under Starscream's shoulders before the cry rang out...

"_NO!_"

The optics opened. Prime's dark vision was flooded with glowlight, he saw a face painfully familiar and a stranger's all at once, and his first dumbfounded thought- "You're so pale..."

_His face is pale, because it's not him._

And so slowly, like time standing still, a wail of, "_DON'T, IT'S THE DEC-!"_ was suddenly silenced by a null ray's ricochet.

Floodlights blared on. Prime stared at the mech in his arms. Like a corrupt-memory feed, he had wanted so badly to be holding Starscream and instead held Skywarp, liveried in the black and purple shades of an organic injury, face pale like a ghost, and the turn of events was so horrifying that he was frozen for a solid second. _This can't be happening..._

Skywarp jerked free of Prime's grip and Prime looked up to see a dozen Decepticons, all weapons framed on him, and Prowl, still shining in his ceremonial gear, magnetic coils slung around his neck like a noose, horror etched into the living metal features. In a microsecond Prime saw this, and he roared in incendiary anger before every weapon fired at once.

* * *

Absolute darkness had its own flavour, a heavy syrup, the absence of effervescent light.

He tasted the dark and knew that it was dark, that his optics were still online and fed him back nothing because there was only nothing. His body ached as if from a fall, but already he was self-repairing, nanotubules opening molecular gates, the transuranic element of Cybertronium cold-fissioning into component atoms of titanium and platinum, hardness and conductivity, enough to keep him alive until the protomass could grow to fill the void.

Prime halted the repairs to the minimum required functionality. No paint job or disguising lights. He was certain he was a prisoner, and that meant his energy reserves might have to last him a while. He sent out a blip of sonar, registered a round enclosure, a metal room, too high to climb out of. He felt his way around the room by sonar, clicks and chips returning a picture of a deep silo. Reinforced concrete with a steel layer. No place to grip the smooth walls. Too old to have been part of the collider complex. That meant he had been moved, and was no longer near rescue.

He quietly cycled through all his options, from crushing hand-holds into the walls or magnetizing himself, and all of them registered against his energy supplies. Possible, yes, but if a ton of energon wasn't waiting at the top he would collapse like a bucket of bolts.

So Prime retreated to a sheltered corner, sat, and waited. In that spare time he pondered on the circumstances of his capture. Was Prowl here too, held captive? Had they killed him? Had any of the others gotten back safely? Were they massing for his rescue, or barely able to function under the weight of their wounds? And what about Starscream?

They would have missed him straight away. Mirage would have been furious. Xaaron would not have been the slightest bit surprised, seeing all kinds of eloping and forced sparkbondings that had ever existed under a borrowed sun.

His stasis was interrupted by the sound of an electrical current crackling on wires, a vibrating plastic diaphragm. A human microphone, or a speaker, of an old-fashioned kind. A voice came through, distorted but terribly familiar. Decepticon hate-tones, then in English, _If I'm of no use to you, don't keep me here!_

"Star...?

_Megatron, show yourself, coward._ Desperate notes despite the anger. He was a prisoner too.

Prime pressed up close to the diaphragm, willing himself to be heard. "Starscream, I'm here."

But if he heard, there was no sign of it, only the small voice in the darkness, and then the larger, deeper one, as heavy as suffering.

"_Who are you calling for, my Second, my love?"_  
"You!"

Prime heard the cat-like step of Megatron prowling a room not quite unlike this one. He spoke English almost exclusively. A conqueror's language. A slaver's language. Loved it for its brute acquisition and deletion of other languages. No art in its history, only trade and conquest. He spoke it slow and clean, with only a hint of Cybertronian susurration.

Megatron spoke it because he knew Prime was listening, and meant for him to understand every word.

"_Why don't you call for your mighty Autobot leader. Oh, but of course, he has bonded with another now. He sated his desires upon you like one might deposit one's garbage in a Dead End gutter."_

Starscream only growled, but Prime knew how deeply Megatron's words cut.

"_It seems your time among the Autobots has made you forget your place among us. It was once my name written on your spark, me whom you wished for."_

"I never wished for you!"

"You called me Leader. You called me Lord".

Prime hugged the wall, audio receptors close to the little diaphragm, anxiety making his outer shell weaken at the joints.

Starscream's reply was full of venom, "_You were never my Leader. You were never my Lord."_ purred Megatron, "_how could I have forgotten. You allowed yourself to become - how do the humans put it - whore to them. Spread your legs and revealed your protoflesh..."_

"Oh,"

...at this Starscream let out a grinding squeal of agony, and Prime clawed at the wall and his circuits sizzled in fear and phantom pain...

"_...to them? How many did you have of those filthy Autobots, rutting at your openings? Several, I suppose, yet cunning enough for each to think they were the only one."_

For all that he knew Megatron was aware of the radio in the wall, Prime could not quite stop the valve-wrench of distress in his chest. Starscream was respiring heavily, short soughs of sound escaping him, the same sound he made when approaching overload, and yet not, not like that at all.

"_Or maybe they have discovered you out, for I offered you back in trade to Prime, and he refused you."_

Starscream swore at Megatron in Decepticon hate-speech.

"_No matter. You will learn your place again. I can forgive you enough to teach you."_

Then there was the awful screech of protometal striking protometal, again and again, and Starscream's voice wailing like a machine stuck on high revs and unable to slow down and above it all Megatron's voice, _stinking, filthy, traitor, disgusting, shameful_ and Prime yelling _stop, stop_ and beating the concrete wall until he was down to the reinforcing cage of high-tension steel and his hands were broken and bleeding lubricant, until Starscream was silent and Megatron's voice faded, and the speaker turned off and Prime sat alone in the dark with only Starscream's voice in his memory just before it all went quiet, "_Optimus, oh Primus help me," _and Megatron's laugh:

_"If he wanted you so, why did he try to kill you?"_

* * *

Prime woke up, and he had been supplied some light, a globe left on in the high reaches of the silo. His energy reserves were red-levelling. He had arrested the flow of lubricant from his hands, and had healed them by rerouting nanites from his proto-core to his exoskeleton, but the energy spent in repairing himself had required him to consume mass, and that had structurally weakened him.

The speaker was silent for now. Prime was torn between anxiety and relief. If there was no sound, perhaps Megatron had left Star alone. For two days now Starscream had been tortured, and just for Megatron's pleasure. It was not as if they had to extract information - Starscream's spark had clearly been hacked early on and anything of worth had been taken. For two days Prime could do nothing but listen as Megatron did things to Starscream that bore no explanation, that were nothing but wails and pleas through the tiny speaker, and Prime had learned that there was no use in shouting for Megatron to stop, and that maybe even Prime's voice was spurring him on. So Prime shut up, and endured that terrible sound in silence.

When the speaker crackled on again, Megatron was talking.

"_Who is your Lord?"_

A murmur, hardly more than a scratch of syllable.

"_Speak louder!"_

"You are my Lord." The first words he had spoken that were not in agony. Starscream sounded beyond exhausted. Prime crept up to the speaker, pressed his face against the wall.

"_Who do you have in this world apart from me?"_ said Starscream with a distracted sigh. He had learned to agree with Megatron, agree or be punished. He had learned.

"No one, my Lord..."

"But you have aggrieved me, Starscream, you have caused me much distress. I cannot have you considering yourself a Decepticon when you have betrayed us with your willingness to be a slave."

"Yes, my Lord,"

"_And it occurred to me that you wanted to be an Autobot. But how can it be possible? Your dominion of the sky sets you apart from them. They don't have wings."_

At Megatron's words Starscream gave a long despairing moan, and in hindsight Prime would say that Starscream knew, knew with all his intimate knowledge of Megatron's whim and will and corrosive evil what the mech intended for him, but at that moment Prime was taken aback by the finality of the sound. It was not even a _No_. Just a denial of an act so horrendous that Prime could not process it.

"_Hold him, Soundwave."_

A plaintive request in Decepticon, the warble of Soundwave wanting to be excused.

"_You will stay, Soundwave. How else will my people know what happens to traitors?"_

"No," said Prime, and no sound came out. "No."

Then it came, the sound that belonged nowhere, that set circuits on edge and made connections short and fuses black out. The sound of metal being crushed and rendered and torn.

Prime braced for the scream, but there was none, only sharp gasps, a spatter of unrelated consonants.

_Hnh. Kkk. Tttw._

No, Prime said, no, and no, and no, and he could not speak, he was struck insensible with what had been suggested, it couldn't be true, it was a null argument, this statement is false.

Megatron laughed with insane glee, entertained beyond measure. Something landed close to the microphone, something with heft and weight along with a resonant hollowness.

_But Autobots don't have wings._

The very electrons were contaminated with suffering, an agony that could not be spoken. Even the walls trembled with it. Prime pressed his cheek to the concrete, opened his vocalizer and nothing emitted. Starscream, he cried silently, Starscream, but nothing came out. Broken. His sensors set and re-set. Something tore within him, a ghastly loom of pain, like a wave's crest that never reached shore. It was beyond his programming. It was an act that could only be looked at on the edges of reasoning. Stricken, he pressed close to the speaker.

A Decepticon's giggle, laced with fear.

An uneven thump-thump-thump, and spastic scratchings.

He'd watched with horrified pity once when a rat had been trapped in the doors of the Ark, its hindquarters sheared off at the base, a half-rat. The animal had still struggled, trailing intestines and crushed spine, afire with dying, and here were the same sounds writ large, a creature injured beyond mortal agony.

_But Autobots don't have wings._

_"Stand up, you traitor,"_ said Megatron. "_You have lubricant all over you. Look at him, Soundwave, Doesn't he look pathetic"_

_"Yes my Lord,"_ said Soundwave in his poor English, not sounding convinced at all.

Starscream began to wail, nonsense words, not even real words, his memory cores venting along with his lubricant.

"_Can't you stand up? Can't you speak? You disgust me. Speak to me, traitor. Tell me who is your Lord now? Who brings you pain? Who brings you terror?"_

The whisper, so quiet.

"No," whispered Prime into the speaker. His neural network sparked and shorted. Images of Starscream, so delicate, the tender skin of his wings that responded to a stroke, a touch. The way he'd looked at him, optics flaring red half-moons on his mirror-dark cheeks, saying _yes_ when Prime had first taken him in love, had first sunk himself in joy, mass and matter, into the shadowspace of his body. Images of the rat, crushed and bleeding, fangs bared, defiant and pathetic even in death.

"_Kill me,"_ wailed Starscream, "_kill me..."_

Prime sobbed into the speaker, _Oh Primus, oh Alpha Trion, oh my Starscream, what has he done to you._

Megatron laughed again and Prime felt his joints curling in on themselves like metal leaf under heat.

"_Did you have ambitions, my traitor? Did you think that maybe you would go back to the Autobots, live among them again? Perhaps I cannot convey how much you are dead to Prime. He despises you, you worthless scrap heap, tried to have you executed so he could sparkbond with a real Autobot. My spies tell me he was ashamed of you, and now, how would such a high-ranking individual ever want to go near such an ugly thing?"_

Starscream only moaned.

"_Stand up, I didn't give you permission to sit. Come here, Soundwave, and show your comrade what Prime has been doing while he has been gone..."_

A static-laced recording. Prime recognized the high-pitched cries of his own echolocation. The voice in the void, _Optimus?_

Suddenly Skywarp's placement made awful sense. If Starscream had been conscious, if he had been thinking properly he would have noticed the darkness, noticed the careful editing of Prime's words so that his name was not heard. All he saw, through crimson pain, would have been Prime embracing his dark-hued twin brother.

"_There are always replacements for you. How could he want you now? You disgust even me. Ah, but your eyes are still defiant. I think I shall let you see this moment of Prime's dalliance with your replacement for a few seconds more. Then I shall take your optics out of your traitor's face and you will be left with this pleasant memory."_

And with that Starscream let out one last, dying cry, and the light-globe overhead shorted out in morphic empathy, raining sparks down into the silo, and the speaker shorted out, and Prime sat in empty, echoing darkness.

* * *

TBC


	6. Reunion

Six: Reunion

* * *

He cycled into stasis and out again. In the effort to conserve energy he slowly began to shut down all non-essential processes. Sensors began to flare up; pain and the hunger-pangs of mass being consumed for power.

There seemed little reason to keep himself conscious. In all their long, drawn-out war he had lost friends and comrades, and each of them had been a terrible loss; but never like now, when he had been so responsible for Starscream's death, as if he had delivered him, bound, to Megatron himself. There seemed little point in staying awake. To be awake was to think of _him_ torn apart and dying, of listening in near darkness and not being able to see, a memory burned deep. So deep, Prime could use Starscream as an indicating factor - once those memories were gone, then the shutdown had become so complete. There could be no recovery.

He had given up on rescue. The processes and algorithms for hope were turned off early. So when he saw the shadow in his room, a crouching figure, he knew he was hallucinating, for the outlines were Star's outlines, except with wings and crimson optics, which were gone from Starscream, and this one was alive, which Starscream was not.

"Star," he said to his vision, "I should have kept you. If only you had told me."

The vision visibly trembled. It pained Prime to look at him in this half-light, whole when he was not whole. Alive when he was not alive. Perhaps he was going insane, too many bad sectors, null arguments, programming paradoxes. It happened rarely, but it happened, and Prime had seen 'bots shell-shocked from the horrors of war, catatonic or crying out nonsense, reliving tortures and agonies, or speaking to dead friends that did not exist.

He heaved a breath, trying to get the nitrogen into his weakened body. "I should find you again, if the All-Spark permits it."

"We don't believe in the All-Spark." The voice echoed, as if it came from far away.

"Of course." Prime was so tired. "I forget."

"Our mass-donor did. I have _his_ memories, alone out of all of us. Only me. Not Star. Not poor Sky. That makes me isolated among the Decepticon cause."

He didn't quite sound like Starscream. The Decepticon accent was stronger, smoother. Starscream had never quite lost the tritone dissonance of his scientist's Cant, his early upbringing.

"For days I struggled to comprehend how he could have fallen so easily into bondage with you, but now I see that you were trapped by him as well."

Prime heaved himself up on one elbow. What was his vision saying? He forced dark-vision nanites into his failing optics, and his vision became, not Starscream or Skywarp, but a mech in blue livery. Sky camouflage. He winced. Deceived again. He was too tired to laugh.

The quiet voice continued, "I found it obscene that Starscream should be doing what our spies told us. Little more than harlot and chattel. What a way for him to be brought down. But this war...this war...it blinds us to the realities of the Matrix Bearer, that once the one who carried the Matrix would have been the Leader of all Cybertron, and his consort Prime by association."

Prime struggled to recall what their own intel and spies had gathered about Thundercracker, the third brother. _More sensitive than the other two,_ they said, _and perhaps of all the seekers. He still has memories of an Autobot mass-donor, can speak our Language. He questions the war, is more likely to pity organics. If things become unstable among the Decepticons we could win him to our side..._ If a Dead End oracle had said to Prime all those years ago, _with one of these seekers you will break your spark, he will die and you'll wish yourself in his place_, Prime would have realistically studied the evidence, chosen this blue seeker, not their iniquitous air commander, chosen sensitivity over terror, chosen the doubter over the ambitious leader.

And yet how things had turned out.

"What have they done with his body?"

"Discarded it." Thundercracker stood up, began to circle Prime like a scavenger, wary and hungry. "Megatron was too harsh in his punishment. He meant to keep my brother as a trophy, but the injury is-" quick glance, as if debating whether to be blunt, "-severe."

"Monster."

Thundercracker smirked. "Coming from you? Megatron has a reason behind his cruelty. Megatron never forgets that Starscream led us through years of his absence, eons when we should have been made extinct as a species. There were times when our Decepticon speech would have become a dead language, when you Autobots came close to wiping us out. Starscream kept us alive, kept our voices whole, and a great many remember that."

"We never tried to wipe you out. It was your methods that we could not allow."

"You say methods. We say _culture_." Thundercracker tipped up his head. A stray lance of sickly light fell across his face. He could be Starscream in profile. Prime wanted to touch him, then turned in on himself with guilt.

"I can smell the yearning on you. Don't think that it wouldn't be easy for me to ask Megatron to keep you as a pet." A sharp breath. Oh yes, Thundercracker had considered it. But the seeker exhaled and shook his head. "He fears you, our Leader. Fears that his own people might turn to the Matrix Bearer in some primitive need to fulfil the old ways."

"Why hasn't he killed me, then? I'm at his mercy," growled Prime.

"Oh, he'll do that. He enjoyed seeing you suffer as Starscream suffered, but he'll plan something even worse. Your human friends. Your own fellow Autobots. Starscream was merely a taste of things to come."

Thundercracker knelt down before Prime, and his eyes lowered. "But somehow I think that the torture was more exquisitely painful then he knew. You will mourn the loss of comrades yes, but this one..." Thundercracker sniffed him, detecting cyberemones, electrical emotion, "...this one you believed your fault, yes."

Thundercracker stood up and walked away, hauling open a thick slab of steel as thick as his hand-span. Were he at full strength, Prime would have rushed him, now he could only stare at the entrance.

A pause, and the Seeker turned.

"The body has been discarded in the old coolant pond. This is an old heavy water nuclear reactor - you should be able to find your way around."

Prime reset his audios, not certain if he'd heard Thundercracker correctly. "You're telling me where Starscream is?"

"Get with the program, Prime. I'm going to inadvertently leave the blast-doors open and you're going to escape."

Prime sensed there was more that Thundercracker wasn't telling him. "Why are you doing this?"

The steady crimson gaze did not waver, not even when Prime's internal-communication organs began to pick up the call and response of an Autobot infiltration team. Not even when the percussion of a small explosion rushed into the silo. Not even when Prime asked again.

"Because your comrades are coming. Because I need time to get away. Megatron has charged me with waiting until our - ah - project has run its course and I can't leave straight away." A crimson flicker now, regretful. "Because I still remember who I used to be."

Prime heaved himself up, servos straining under mass. "What makes you think I won't tell them where you are?"

Thundercracker gave a shrug and head tilt. "Because of Starscream. Because he was still alive when I pushed him into the pond."

Another explosion, and Prime saw Thundercracker in the doorway, lit up in all the colours of fire. There were Decepticons screaming in the upper reaches of the silo, hate-calls floating down along with ashes. Where he found that reserve of energy he would never know, but Prime shoved Thundercracker aside and lumbered out of the silo, down the massive hallway that had once been a conduit for nuclear warheads and fissile material, the massive containment for slow breeder uranium wrapped in a graphite shell. The core was still radioactively hot - he could feel the neutrons colliding with him, sinking into his protomass and giving him a power boost. He ran past the slumped and melted core, the steam generator and into the old cooling ponds, where superheated water would collect underneath the great wide chimneys.

The pond was cold and still now, and the concrete-framed sky was the same shade as old fluorescent tubes. Raindrops misted down into the pond. Bits of old graphite rods, upturned machinery, rusted steam pistons, a chunk of masonry, a boiler door. Prime waded in, past an old car chassis rusting on its roof, not caring if the water was corrosive. Scrap plastic snarled on his thighs. Every time he knocked against anything with any heft, he imagined it was Starscream.

"Star," he shouted, "Star..." There was no reply. Frantic, he began to overturn the debris, sending waves of dirty water splashing against the blackened concrete walls of the chimney.

The voices were louder and closer now. He could hear the individual words in Autobot, his name most of all. None of it mattered. None of it...

Until he saw the silver trail of deep-body protomass floating on the grey water, catching the light.

Prime heard a sound emitting from his mouth he'd never heard before, a vocalization of hope and horror. He saw the wounds first, the torn exoskeleton and the ragged strings of ripped protoflesh before he saw Starscream's shoulders, the dark head almost submerged. He struggled past streamers of biodegrading plastic and fell into deeper water. He floundered about, found purchase on a lip of concrete, sharp utterances of _no no no no_ and he pulled Starscream's body to him, turned him over and his voice became hoarse and static laced as he fought to contain a wail of loss that threatened to consume him.

The golden swell of Starscream's cockpit was smashed and bleeding protoflesh and lubricant. His pelvic armour was only melted slag and scar tissue where a delicate lattice should have been. It was worse than the twisted scar tissue of an organic's wound. Something had been shoved between his legs repeatedly and often, something that only meant to bring pain.

"Oh no, no Star no..."

He clawed away the plastic that covered Starscream's face, and grey water pooled in the empty sockets where his optics used to be. His face, his dark and beautiful face was damaged almost beyond recognition.

"Prime..."

Prime looked up and clutched Star's body close. Powerglide was clinging to the lip of the chimney, a hundred feet above him.

"I'll get Ratchet," called Powerglide, nervous, not sure of what to make of this wild-faced mech glaring up at him. Prime heard Powerglide's call, "_I've found him Ratch, I've found him, he's in bad shape."_Prime hugged Starscream tighter to him, and with that, Starscream coughed.

Little more than a sigh.

Prime was sure he'd blown a fuse. He was almost malfunctioning with relief.

"Starscream..."

"He despises you, you worthless scrap heap," grated Megatron's voice from Starscream's broken lips. "How could he want you now. You disgust even me."

Prime shook him gently. "No, that's not true. Star, wake up..."

Broken optics swivelled on blackened stalks and small rasps of static escaped Starscream as he relived another attack, his broken body juddered in phantom pain in Prime's arms.

Starscream was purging, the last of his memories falling from him before the spark extinguished. Prime had seen it in so many mechs injured beyond repair, their memories pouring out like water from a broken container. He wouldn't let it happen. He tore open his own chest-plating and revealed his spark. Weak, but the Matrix's refraction cast blue highlights on the water. In the distance he could hear shouts, a _no, no,_ and he pulled at the last of Starscream's armour, exposed a spark that was nothing more than a fist of inert metal in a broken chest.

Ratchet was rushing towards him, yelling, _"No Prime, it'll kill you!"_Prime's last singular thought before their sparks melded was his arms tightening, pulling Star's chest to his own. He thought he heard his own shout of agony. Starscream's spark was so starved for energy it was like a leech, or a vampyr thing.

Out of control, Prime freefell into Starscream's memories, hate and pain and torture and hate and pain and in all of it Megatron, over all. Tearing and hurting and tearing. _I've been a disappointment Megatron, you can have me there, just don't damage me any more._ Gasping for purchase he began to swim towards earlier memories, the one thing that was not corroded and bitter and terrible. Saw sky, felt rock, a lizard's face, his own head looking at him, no, he didn't want to be here in this memory, it was the sentinel-ledge, and _he_ was not sure why he was here, Perceptor saying, "Star, don't go, it isn't safe for you out there," and _his_ reply, "_I just want him to tell me why he's bonding with Mirage. I have to hear it from him. I want him to say it to my face._"

_"Don't be crazy Star, this isn't like a sparkling story. Primes bond for politics, not for love. It's over."_He remembers this as Prime pulls him onto the ledge despite his weak protests of "Not here. Later," and "Please, Prime. Not tonight," but Prime holds him down, says _don't deny me this_ and he's panicking because he can't move and Prime won't let him up and his legs are forced apart and then inside him and it hurts, because he's not ready...

"Who said it was for love anymore?"

"You. I can hear it in your voice."

The sky is so blue. Not like the shadow-side of Cybertron, all black and stars. If only things were different. He clutches earth, rends gouges in the stone, wishes for the act to be over, and when he feels Prime spill into him he feels nothing but shame. Prime overloads, disengages too quickly, apologizes, doesn't even pretend what he did was out of any kind of respect.

You fool Starscream, Megatron used to say, you fool Starscream he thinks now, you imagined yourself as Consort to a Prime, but this is all you were wanted for. All these lies, corroding you, turning you from what you were to this thing you are now.

When you finally ask, Prime does not even deny that he is being bonded to Mirage.

Keep your emotions hidden, Starscream, but it's worse, because Prime knows, _he knows_ your deepest most secret wish, the one you've nurtured like a delicate flame for all these months and it's extinguished now because he looks at you as if you had done something filthy just by wishing, and something inside you dies. "I'm disappointed," and "why would you ask for more?" and that nasty Autobot Gears saying, _No self respecting Autobot would subject a loved partner to such a humiliating act _and how much shame can he bear, he who was once a leader, now less than a slave.

_How could he want you now. You disgust even me._Too much.

Too much.

Prime tried to detach but couldn't. _A hungry spark won't let its energy source free..._The voices were everywhere. "Hold him," and "We can't use an analgesic, he'll die still attached to Prime."

Prime felt the jolts pierce Starscream's back, rivets straight through the exoskeleton. Starscream jerked like misfired neurons in a dead thing. It was Prime who screamed in agony.

The metal gauze was a field dressing at its most basic, it held you together until they could fix you. Starscream was insensible - he wasn't even processing the pain anymore, the dressing was one more moment of torture, but to Prime in simpatico it was as if his back had been crosshatched with acid.

"No more," he gasped, "no more."

"Hang on, Optimus," Ratchet said, "I gotta stop him from bleeding out, else he'll take you with him."

Stabilized, Starscream was pulled away, his spark arcing the distance between them. Prime held on, hands frozen to claws, leaving dents in the weakened metal exoskeleton. If he passed out...if he passed out they would discard Starscream and rescue only him. He hadn't the strength to explain. He had to hold on...

They were trying to take him away, they were saying, "he's not one of us," and "he can't come with us."

Darkness wrapped him in arms the shade of burnt-out fuses. His mind clouded and cleared, clouded and cleared, sparked and futzed. He mumbled words in all the languages he knew. New Cybertron, spoken Autobot, binary Autobot, subspace Autobot, the murmurs of Insect Aspect, Beast Tongue, and one word in Decepticon that he knew close to his spark - night sun in the heavens, wild cry of rage, cry out. //Starscream//.

"I'm not going," he whispered, he shouted, he cried. "I'm not leaving him." It made no difference. He was not strong enough to hold on. He wailed in sensory silence, not wanting to slip into stasis, not wanting to lose him again.

But in the end he had no choice, for the darkness conquered him completely and he was lost to whirling static.

_He's gone. _

* * *

tbc


	7. The Greater Good

Seven: The Greater Good

* * *

Time became fluid, his internal clock lost its metronomic function and he succumbed

to the no-time of stasis.

A moment's clarity and he knew he was home, back in the Ark, a picosecond of fleeting sentience before he was tumbled back into darkness again.

Sometimes hands would press him down to the memory foam of his recovery berth, sometimes bindings when hands could not hold him alone. All times a vigil, and during lucid moments he understood the murmurs of voices, _How long will he be out like this_ or _Can we try another routine?_ or even _He's speaking that word again_. He wanted to speak out, but his bindings were shorting out his electronics, muting him, and all he wanted to know was what had happened to Starscream. He recognized Ratchet's voice saying "We should have let him die out there," in English, recognized Prowl saying, "It's not too late."

Prowl, who must have escaped. Prowl, who only had the interest of all of them and not just himself. Ratchet would listen to him.

Then one day the fog seemed to clear for good and Prime saw the crumbling ceiling of the medical chambers as if they were bright and new.

Sensing that he had woken, the bindings holding him broke, and Prime sat up. His exoskeleton gleamed under the lights, evidence of care and polishing during his recovery. His comrades had looked after him. It was proof of their respect.

Warned by an internal alarm, Ratchet and Wheeljack hurried in. Ratchet had been in the middle of another task, and a wetware lubricant pump dangled in his damp hands like a cybernetic jellyfish. Wheeljack's headpieces glowed a hesitant tone of blue.

"How're you feeling?" Wheeljack asked, not quite managing to keep the hesitation out of his voice.

"Alive."

Prime went though each of internal functions, collated reports. He was alive, but just. Long gaps in his consciousness, where all his physical energy had been diverted into keeping the Matrix alive. He wondered how close he'd come to dying, if the Elders had been contacted, if a new Prime candidate had been chosen.

Ratchet was silent, his optics vacant. He was accessing the medical records. When he was at last satisfied he came out of his otherplace and said, "You caught a ferrous prion. Metal viroid. It was sucking the power out of your spark faster than we could put it in. Luckily the oxygen therapy seems to have worked. Rusted it right out of you."

"Yes, lucky." Then Prime paused. He noticed the way the two mechs held themselves, tense, as if waiting for him to say something. Something that he had moaned and shouted through his convalescence. He was going to say it. His spark was melting though his chest-plate with the need to know what had happened to...

"How are the others? Ironhide? Prowl?"

The relief was palpable. They had clearly expected something else to come out of his mouth.

"They're doing fine. We were fortunate that Prowl managed to escape, but there's yet to be a cage built that can hold him for very long."

Flustered by Prime's hesitation, Wheeljack said, "Would you like to inspect the troops? They're concerned about you."

"Of course," he said, even though inside he was crushed with worry. But his duty was to be a leader first. He would take care of his people, then take care of himself, the way it always had to be.

"And," said Ratchet, "while you're at it you might have to see Mirage. Having a bondmate skipping out of a bonding ceremony made him lose face."

"I'll see to them all."

Ratchet and Wheeljack exchanged glances, then Wheeljack helped Prime to his feet, whistling caution for balance and clotted lubricant systems.

Testing out his newly restored strength, and with Ratchet following like a concerned parent, Prime began to reconnoitre the base. As he came across fellow 'bots, he greeted them warmly and spoke to them at length, shared well-wishes and reminisces. They were pleased to see him, but he sensed another frequency among their communications, a kind of static, an interference. Something unspoken was hanging over them all, a growing apprehension.

Most of the active Autobot warriors were absent from the Ark. They were on a cooperative exercise with a traditionally antagonistic pair of human armies. Prime contacted them through his internal-communications, and the radio returned delight and welcome at his being up and about, and promises of a great festival when they came home.

"Considering," said Ratchet, "you walked out the middle of one."

But pretence had a half-life, and in the end Prime could bear it no longer. He pulled Ratchet into a side room.

"Tell me where he is."

Ratchet's face furrowed at the armour plates. "Ah Prime, Prime, why did you have to ask me that?"

"Tell me!"

Ratchet's placid, tessellated face became hard. He wasn't going to mince his words. "We should have let him die out there. He's damaged Prime, damaged, and he's gone loco - wild. Won't let anyone fix him. He used to roam the halls like a ghoul until we locked him up-"

"LOCKED HIM UP!?"

"Prime, he scares the others. Vector Sigma, he scares me, this crazy blind mech. He tried to kill himself. Tried to hurl himself off that Westside mesa when he's got no wings. Damn Powerglide saved him and nearly got himself wrecked in the process. Since then we couldn't let him near anyone. I'm saying it as a friend. As your brother in battle. Stay away. You had your fun indulging in exotic practices, but it's done nothing but nearly kill you."

"Is he bad?"

"As in Decepticon?"

"As in...you know what I mean."

"Prime," Ratchet reached up and laid a hand on Prime's shoulder. "Let him go."

Prime shrugged him off. "I'm not giving up on him, Ratchet. I want to see him."

"Then what about Mirage? What about us?"

Prime gave Ratchet a long stare. He could feel his own animosity like chemical sludge. Ratchet caught a blade of Prime's desperation, threw up his hands in surrender.

"I'll take you to him. But there's nothing of him left. Whatever you went mass-crazy for doesn't exist."

Prime nearly pushed Ratchet out the door. Ratchet was never a fast mover, and he took his time. At every corner he started up an argument, 'duty' and 'respect' and 'reconsider this,' and 'Mirage gave explicit instructions that you not see him.'

"He's not Prime yet," growled Prime.

"But you are." Ratchet stopped at a non-descript set of blast doors. "So don't say I didn't warn you."

The door slid open to near darkness, a cavernous space. Prime caught the stink of metal shavings, dying protoflesh, old lubricant. The room was so dim he almost didn't notice the pathetic figure stooped in the corner. Didn't recognize him at first. Only a gleam of incidental light off the bolt-heads on the mech's ruined back, the mesh dressings unchanged, lubricant soaked, already beginning to rust.

Starscream turned his head when Prime came in. Light glanced off the mirror-dark cheek, pooled in ruined optic-sockets.

"Perceptor?"

"Star..." Prime started, then stopped. He'd never experienced such uncertainty before. His mechanical parts jumped. His protomass trembled. He wanted to cross the floor, fold Starscream to him, murmur all the words he should have and never said. Wanted to feel him again. Wanted...

Starscream turned back without a word, as if the door hadn't really opened, if nobody had stood there and said his name.

When Starscream finally spoke, it was with a broken rasp, the words in faltering English.

"Ratchet, you told me Perceptor could visit. You promised."

Ratchet said apologetically, "I brought Prime."

The shoulders hunched down. Silver protoflesh oozed from the dressings.

"You told me that he could visit," croaked Starscream in a monotone.

Prime wanted to speak. Ramped up his vocal processors, but every time he did, Megatron's words came back to him, the memory of the day at the sentinel-ledge came back to him. What could he say to make it all right? The damage had been done. There were no words that could fix something so irreparably broken.

The silence became too much. "I think we'd better go," said Ratchet, softly. "He's not well."

Prime nodded, and turned away, the spark-wrench of regret as real as a wound.

"Prime," said Starscream again, and this time he turned his body slightly, so the spare light limned his face, and Prime saw the desecration. Both optics, once so expressive, were now nothing more than black soot and broken glass, his lower lip split, a shoulder finial dented into a ugly knob of metal. His ankle was twisted at an unnatural angle. The afterburner curtains at his heel had gone.

He was a mess. To make it worse, Starscream had been so aware of his looks. Not vain, in the sense of mere vanity, but a point of contention, his identity, and now that was gone.

"Star?"

"I have a request, please." The movement sent body lubricant seeping out of his dressings.

"Anything..."

"Let Perceptor come and visit me. If I am not a prisoner, and you won't let me die, then let me see my friend."

The ache in Prime's spark was unbearable. He had lost Starscream utterly.

Prime turned to Ratchet. "Why has he not been allowed to see Perceptor?"

"Uh, I believe that was a decision made by the security section. Perceptor is not permitted in this part of the base. There are issues about his..." Ratchet bobbed his head, hissed the words, "...attempted coup."

_There was no coup, no conspiracy, there was nothing_, Prime wanted to say. He became acutely conscious of Starscream in the corner, listening. What could he tell Ratchet? Starscream's secret? Shame him even more?

"Then we will go to him. Starscream, can you walk?"

The blind eyes tilted upwards. Suspicion and hope flooded the wrecked face, and Prime died inside, but all he wanted was for Starscream to be happy. And if he could do that, then maybe the rest of what had happened would not matter so much.

Prime stepped close. Starscream shied back. His body language screamed, _don't touch me_.

"Wait. I can manage."

Grimacing, Starscream struggled to his feet. The rancid protoflesh slicked his flanks in fresh gore. The dead optic stalks flailed in their sightless pain. Even broken he still held himself with a wretched pride. He would not let Prime help him, and in a way that was a relief - Prime was not sure if he could have contained himself, would have done something inappropriate, hugged him, refused to let him go.

Sick with anxiety he followed Starscream out the door. Ratchet was apoplectic with frustration, kept flashing Prime hurt looks of, _you've gone loco too!_ before clanging down the conduit. Starscream limped behind Ratchet, dragging his crippled ankle, desperate to keep up, and Prime followed, wanting to cry out to Ratchet to slow down. Why now of all times did he decide to move so quickly?

The news of their meeting spread through the Ark faster than pheromones through an air duct. He could sense optics and sensors on them, watching him. For those few that knew Starscream, who had heard the whispers of an unwise relationship, the whispers were critical.

_What is he doing with him? Has he lost his mind?_

Starscream's echolocation chirrups traced out the floor ahead of him, so he did not falter around airlocks and stairs, and only had to touch-feel for the ladder leading to an emergency hatch onto the roof of the Ark.

"A ladder?" asked Prime.

"We let him go up here," said Ratchet, exasperated. "Because in the end he's a good scientist and Wheeljack needs the observatory data from the radio telescope."

Muttering at being put-out, Ratchet scaled the rungs and pulled Starscream through a hatch that would never have accepted him with his previous wing span. Prime found the fit even tighter, and had to detach some exoskeletal plates to squeeze through.

The view from the top of the Ark was nearly all points on a compass. In the east, pink rays of a coming sunrise sliced the night-time sky, provided a little visible light to see the jumble of experimental equipment the science 'bots had been moving up here. An ad-hoc telescope array jostled with a null-space receiver of an old Cybertronian design, obviously pilfered from a Decepticon ship - the violet brand had not entirely been scoured off. Crouched next to a quantum computer pool and bathed in its infrared light was Perceptor.

"Wheeljack, we'll need to get this in a better vacuum, the dust is interfering with-" he stopped and turned, and his optics grew wide.

"Oh my Primus, Starscream."

"Perceptor?" The echolocation became frenzied. "I can't see you."

Perceptor took a step forward, before glancing a wary look at Prime, and he said something in heavily accented Decepticon. Prime knew very few words in his enemy's tongue, but knew

_radar-dampening_ and _non-functional sonar_ only because they were military terms one was trained to keep alert for. The rest might have meant nothing at all.

Starscream replied between locator chirps.

Perceptor bridged the gap and wrapped his arms around the damaged mech, made strange sounds that Prime imagined coming from another dialect apart from their common hate-speech, knew now that they were the same language group in which Decepticon love songs were sung, like the one Spike had learnt on his click-kazoo.

Even when Ratchet left, Prime stood for a while longer, watching as their heads almost touched, wondering how it could be possible to be so full of envy and self-pity when he rationally knew he'd caused this, orchestrated this every step of the way.

Perceptor turned to Prime and nodded, murmured in Autobot, "Thank you for bringing him, but I think we'd like to be alone now."

"Yes," said Prime, even though as Leader he could have refused Perceptor. Could have said he was going to stay, as was his right. Because at the most basic level Starscream was still a prisoner, and Prime could do anything he wanted with him. Didn't the old stories abound with 'bots kept as courtesans and slaves by warrior princes and warlords from deep Cybertron history? A horrifying, thrilling thought. Against all his programming, but an option, an _option_ to command Starscream, and to not exercise that right was almost to deny his leadership.

But Starscream would not face him, and the thought was gone as soon as it had come, so Prime turned and left the two mechs arm in arm and speaking their private language. The rust-red morning was the colour of endings and decay, and Prime returned to his cold berth alone.

* * *

tbc


	8. Healing

Eight: Healing

* * *

When the doors to his quarters opened upon his return, he was not, in fact, alone at all.

"How did you get in here?" Prime blurted, then winced at his own abruptness. Mirage's optics widened.

"Then it's true what they've been saying. You _have _been with him."

Prime shut the door and waited until the seals held before replying. There were too many ears here, crowding him, forcing his hand. This had to be handled by himself.

"You went to him before you came to me."

"It's good to see you too, Mirage."

Mirage pushed himself close.

"Do you know I was part of the rescue team that went after you? Did you know it was I alone who did not criticise you when you left the Bonding Ceremony to go out to the hadron collider, because I knew you were Prime, and that it was your duty?"

Prime rubbed his head with the heel of his hand. He was not ready to console a frantic 'bot, not when he was so fragile himself.

"No, I didn't know that." Prime wished the Decepticons would attack right now, and spare him Mirage's sudden rant. "I was out of sorts back then."

"You were spark-crazy over our prisoner, that's what you were."

Mirage's face seemed twisted off alignment. He almost looked...sad. Had he looked that way when he'd told Hound that he meant to bond to a Prime, cast off a lover who had supported him from the very beginning? Thrown it all away for a chance at Alpha-caste redemption?

They were a damaged pair, Prime and Mirage, and Prime did not want to judge him. They had both been in the wrong.

Prime opened a shelf and found his emergency stash of energon, the high-grade stuff almost too pure to consume. It was a quality seldom found on Cybertron any more.

Wordlessly, he pushed a gel-cube into Mirage's hand, let Mirage go on, get said what he needed to say, because worse was coming.

"I wouldn't have minded if you wanted to keep him as a pet, a pleasure-slave. You're a Prime. You're allowed your peccadilloes. But I'm your bondmate. I take precedence over all of that!"

"Sit down Mirage," said Prime, "and eat your energon."

Mirage sat on Prime's berth, swallowed the whole cube at once and looked at Prime, hurt.

"I remember when you first joined us, when before you were an Alpha and an Empty."

"I was a respected citizen back then." Small sad voice. "Before the war. When my brother-Alphas said we should side with the Decepticons. Side with the winners."

"And you went through a lot to be accepted here. From your Alpha peers. From a lot of the Autobots. I know this."

Mirage snorted, but the energon was having its effect, and the ramped-up fight had gone out of him. He turned his head sideways.

"I know," continued Prime, "that to be sparkbonded with a Prime is a great honour. Your standing would have been more than restored among the Alphas, but elevated, utterly. All those who shunned you, who spoke of you as you were a traitor, they would have had to take it all back."

"But I am sparkbonded to a Prime," whispered Mirage, suddenly recognising where Prime's talk could be going. "Xaaron agreed. We can finish it tonight. Today even. Now." Mirage's hand slipped to his chest. With trembling hands he spread open his exoskeleton and revealed the deep blue pavilion of his spark, his most intimate axis.

Prime stepped to him, and gently closed palmed Mirage's ribs shut. "Mirage, listen to me. You wanted to be bonded to a Prime. But not to me."

"Prime..."

"Call me _Optimus_. If we were to be bonded, it would not be to a Prime, but to me. You understand? You would sit alone up on Cybertron, and they would fete you as Prime Consort, but you would only be a mere mech. Once we are together, the divinity and mystery would be gone, you understand?"

He was trying to be delicate. Mirage frowned, and shook his head. "Are you talking about mass sharing?" He could only whisper the obscene word.

Prime saw how he considered taking Prime's mass as one would consider permanently losing a limb in exchange for Bonding. A grotesque act, but perhaps worth the trade-off.

"I'm talking about..." Prime paused. What was he talking about? To be touched by hands that wanted to touch you? To be adored in body, and not just as a container for a parasite?

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," said Mirage. "It was supposed to be proper, and solemn. You dirtied yourself being with Starscream. You dirtied the Matrix."

Prime forgave Mirage his outburst. It was hard, to be brought back to ground when before it seemed the sky was the limit. He took Mirage's face in his hands. "You are a dear friend, and a valued soldier. But between us there can be no more."

Mirage pulled back.

"I don't understand."

"You will. You and I have both been wrong, we've been driven by the same mistakes, basing our choices on others' opinions and not our own." He swallowed his own energon. It tasted bitter in his mouth, acid in his energy converters. "Go back to Hound. There's still time. He will forgive."

"I could have made you proud," Mirage was almost washed out with static. "But all Starscream will ever do is hate you."

Before Prime could speak, Mirage had left. Prime watched him go, then finished off the rest of his energon before falling into a dazed, fitful recharge.

* * *

Life returned to normal, for whatever normal was, and Prime threw himself into being a Leader. There were skirmishes here and off world to attend to, not a few related to their growing number of human interactions. The Autobots had always refused to be drawn into territorial struggles - one human was much the same as another. The humans' self-generated diversity was so varied as to defy categorization. The few 'bots that had tried to map out human moiety and hierarchical lines ultimately became confused and abandoned the task.

"I don't think even the humans know who they belong to anymore." Bumblebee had said. "Best if we don't take sides because they really are all the same, except they don't know it."

Faced with an advanced species who were ambivalent at helping any one nation, the governments and organisations of this little organic home world slowly began to leak pertinent information to their own scientists and contractors and eventually to their civilians about the aliens in their midst.

Finally there was the issue of energon, the steadily worsening supply needed to be synthesised with human help. Human scientists were happy to exchange knowledge about resources, and even the simplest little dark-matter equation had them rapturous with delight. Prime put Wheeljack in charge of meteing out the information. Organic morals sometimes flowed to close to Decepticon lines, and like spark-children, it was appropriate to keep weapons knowledge from them.

With all the work, and if Prime concentrated really hard, he might even forget about Starscream. He kept away from the telescope array on the Ark's nose. He avoided the places he might find Perceptor, because as his informants were only too quick to tell him, one would not be seen without the other. Starscream had taken up residence with Perceptor, lived with Perceptor up there amongst the scientific equipment, the detectors and sensors and arrays.

Prime accepted now that Starscream spent nights staring into a desert sky, safe and trusting in Perceptor's arms. Knew that he was perhaps happy for the first time since he'd woken in the Ark's hangar, spitting hate and humiliation.

But Prime's body could not accept. His body, the hideous casement, machine of war and terror, starved for the very thing it had been constructed never to have. No amount of energon or work or recharge could cut into that loss. Sometimes it seemed worse than before Starscream had left, because he had a choice now. There was no more reason for him to be moral and good.

At times it seemed that he needed to use all his willpower not to march to Perceptor's lean-to and demand that Starscream be returned to him. His good side and his organic side warred in his mind.

His good side said, _you must not stoop to that level. You are a respected Leader, not a minor Cybertronian warlord. You do not have slaves._

But his proto-organic side loomed up, dark and hungry, said, Starscream, he belongs to you and knows it. He's a Decepticon. He will accept his position in his life.

_But he'll say no._

_He can't fight you. You can have him anyway._

No, groaned Prime in argument, never. He's too hurt anyway.

So, he won't fight too long.

But the organic thing tortured him with memories of such devastating overload, when it had all been all he could do to hold on to Starscream's exoskeleton and wail like a re-born, and it tormented him that he did not care that Starscream would be hurt, that he would not want him, that any pleasure would be taken by force, but the relief, the relief.

Those nights he would lie with his own memories, his pathetic hands on his armour, imagining another's hands and near-crying in frustration. Right this moment Starscream's damaged body was being held by Perceptor, was being stroked and caressed into a gentle overload. Perceptor was a scientist, but he was experienced in the minutiae of spark-and-armour play. He would know how to coax the fear out of Starscream, speak to him in his own language, teach him how to love another, someone who would be steady and true.

Prime gripped the berth-sides. His protoflesh had turned to dust. The bright silver of his joys had corroded away. Once he dallied with the idea of taking another mech to his berth, but even if they submitted to the profanity of mass sharing, he doubted he would feel anything but guilt and loss. Anguished, he would roll his pelvis into the gel of his berth and palm the armour between his legs, unable to stroke himself to overload but still imagining his taking Starscream in all the ways he could be taken, and sometimes he had wings and sometimes he was gored and wingless and dying and Prime took him anyway, weeping I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Sometimes he never slept at all.

The days moved into each other, the Earth-time markers of darkness and daylight. Prime was always acutely aware of how far away from home he was, could feel it when he lay alone on his berth, the magnetic flux and flow around the deep metal core of the planet, the echo in his own body.

The climate altered around them. As the globe tilted in its yearly journey around the sun, great seas warmed and cooled. Air movements sped and slowed, changed course. The springtime of Starscream had turned into the dead summer, when the desert baked in a crippling heat, when likes dried out, when life retreated into the dust.

He missed the way Starscream used to look at him, their intense arguments on Autobot and Decepticon culture. He missed the illusion of having an equal, in the way Starscream had known what it was like to be a figurehead, to lead a people, and at the same time beholden to other greater powers.

He just missed him.

The humans came, bringing their own problems, their own old arguments, their own myths and creation legends. Prime was patient with them when the others would not be. It was hard to be sentient, to know and feel things intensely. Humans had no mechanical side to fall back on. They were completely given over to their emotions, their bodies, their meat. Prime could understand that.

Nobody spoke to him of bonding now.

So it came as a surprise that one of those nights he was interrupted by a frenzied knocking on the door, an alarm going off in his internal-communications.

Groaning, Prime slid the steel slab open only to see Perceptor standing there, his face a smear of grief.

It could only mean one thing. Prime clung to the door, expecting the worst.

"He's hurt. Badly. Spark-Hell. I thought you should know. Just in case he doesn't make it."

A distant clang, an automatic door shutting on another level. Perceptor startled, looked from side to side furtively. "I have to go. I'm not allowed to be here."

Perceptor walked away, but Prime followed him, recharge forgotten.

"Wait! What happened?"

"He tried to...ah Primus, he tried to..."

Perceptor shook his head, could not speak.

"Where is he now?"

But he knew already. Ratchet had him. He grabbed Perceptor by the elbow and dragged him off to the medbay despite the smaller 'bot's weak protests.

The medbay's stasis lab was glowing. Ratchet was bent over the stasis pool, muttering to himself.

Immersed in the energon-rich water Starscream seemed smaller by refraction, or maybe he was that reduced, just a broken thing. It had been so long since he'd seen him, the damage was still a shock.

Ratchet scowled when he saw Perceptor and Prime. "Just the two 'bots I don't need."

Perceptor rocked from side to side, muttering, "I should have seen it, I should have..."

"You should have been looking after him," grated Prime. "That's why I left you with him."

Perceptor looked at Prime, halfway past horrified. "But I can't fix him! He was talking crazy talk again, and then he just jumped."

"Right off the nose," added Ratchet. "It's fortunate he was in the middle of transforming when he hit the ground."

"Meaning?"

Ratchet pointed at Perceptor who sighed and gave the lecture he sometimes gave spark-children, "Most of his mass was in sub-space. At that point in transformation, force and inertia won't do much damage."

"I thought you said he was hurt badly."

"I wasn't talking about his body, Prime."

An awkward silence, heavy with blame. Prime leant over the stasis chamber and pushed a hand into the thick liquid, feeling the tingle of a billion active neutrons. Starscream looked so peaceful, as if nothing had ever happened. He stroked Starscream's face, brushed a thumb over the cheekbone, under a ruined eye socket, down to the swell of his chest. The golden glass was healing with a delicate pearlescent membrane, as fragile as shell. He was aware of Perceptor watching him, wary, so withdrew his hand.

"It wasn't a suicide attempt," murmured Prime. "He was trying to fly."

"How can he fly when he's got no wings?" grumbled Ratchet.

"He might have tried to scan something with the equal mass he has now, tried to replicate it during freefall."

"Ah Primus!" Perceptor slapped his head. "One of the human scientists came by in a single-engine Cessna two days ago. Tiny aircraft."

"Would have made no difference," Ratchet said. "You need large planar surfaces on your metaskeleton to approximate a wingspan, and Starscream's got nothing left of that sort. He's all bits."

"Can he be fixed?" asked Prime.

"Yeah, another hour in the cham-"

"No, I meant fixed. His metaskeleton regrown. So he can fly again."

Ratchet took on an evasive look. "Do you know how many of us this individual has killed during his time airborne? You want to resurrect that capability in him?"

Perceptor gave a small chirp of wonder. "You can! You're saying you can!"

"I'm saying that we shouldn't." Ratchet's voice sounded as if it was resonating out of over-tightened strings. He was going to say yes.

"But it is possible."

Finally Ratchet broke, and slumped his shoulders. There was no winning this argument. "Yes. It's possible. But it's a long process, and..." he turned his head to look at a wall, memory cataracts on his optics, "...it can be gruelling."

"I'll help," said Perceptor, enthusiastically.

"You will be obliged to help," said Ratchet, "because the process requires an intimate knowledge of the subject that can't be done by any mere comrade."

"Perceptor will do whatever needs to be done," said Prime. But of course he will.

"All right," said Ratchet. "Perceptor, stay here. When Starscream wakes, we'll discuss the preliminaries."

Prime took the opportunity to leave the medical rooms. He wanted with all his spark to stay there, but Starscream would not have appreciated his presence.

Mechs didn't really have a circadian rhythm to speak of, but it seemed easier to pattern the cycles of activity and recharge every few terrestrial days. Today seemed to be one of those that the 'bots had chosen if only for social reasons - why be awake when friends were asleep? The skeleton crews for guarding and maintenance remained quietly obscure, so Prime walked through empty halls.

He didn't want to return to his berth, not with so many intimate memories, but could not escape them completely. In the end he found himself squeezing through the porthole to the telescope array. The night-time sky was vast and cold, the galaxy's arm like spilt protomass across a steel-black floor. He saw the temporary berth that Perceptor and Starscream lay in (just a tiny nub of pain in an already open wound, but he deserved it), before walking to the re-entry black nosecone of the Ark.

The planet was travelling through a meteorite cloud, and the shooting stars fell across the eastern sky. Time seemed to slow, and Prime waited for the dawn to come.

Before the sun had fully risen, Prime heard a clanging on the ladder. Someone was climbing up. Prime turned, expecting Perceptor, and was startled to see Wheeljack's bright head appearing in the porthole.

"Prime, we've been looking everywhere for you! Did you turn your radio off?"

"I was technically recharging."

"Up here? Awake?"

"I like the view."

"Recharge is over. Ratchet needs you."

"Who's hurt now?"

"Nobody new. But there's been a complication with Starscream's treatment."

"What?"

"It's complicated."

He returned to see Starscream sitting, damp and sullen, on a storage crate, while Ratchet and Perceptor argued.

"I'm not talking long conversations in the Primus-damned moonlight, has he seen you overload?"

Perceptor turned around. "I've seen 'bots overload, why should this be any different?"

"Perceptor!" Starscream scolded, and exhorted him in Decepticon and Perceptor yelled back, and Starscream folded his arms and looked sideways, angry.

"What's going on?" asked Prime, confused. "Why all this talk about overloading?"

"Primus," muttered Perceptor. "This is embarrassing."

"Rebuilding a metaskeleton," said Ratchet coolly, "is the artificial addition of mass to a body."

"I gathered."

Perceptor folded his arms and looked aside.

"Which by its nature is intensely pleasurable. Why do you think bodysex has its fetishist devotees in certain circles? The habit of mass sharing?"

"Watching a mech overload is not going to be a problem," said Prime. "This is no time to be proper."

"That's the point. The mass receiver cannot overload during the procedure. The electrical discharge will kill any new protoflesh before it has a chance to bond and sprout on the original."

The room was silent. Prime could hear the hydraulics of doors opening and closing throughout the base. Ratchet added, "There's more than one cycle of treatment, and we have to plant a minimum amount of mass each session, otherwise the implant could die, and infect the healthy protoflesh beneath it. An overload will kill you."

"I won't overload," said Starscream.

"Oh, say it now standing here," said Ratchet, "but I've seen mechs beg to be allowed to overload and die. They beg. Just one more, I'm hurting, please, one more. They're compelled to overload. That's why I said it was a bad idea to consider this course of action."

"I won't let him overload," said Perceptor. "I've seen mechs overload."

"Which brings us to our argument - have you seen him overload? What's the coloursmell? The aura? When can you do much and not little?"

Perceptor didn't reply, but it was evident he could not answer those questions.

Prime could do little but stand blinking in miscomprehension as the world set and re-set itself. But they had been lovers. Everyone said so...

"Prime..." started Ratchet.

"No!" shouted Starscream. "_No, no, no_!"

"Who else then?" snapped Ratchet, "Who else have you been with who has seen you overload, knows what to look for? Because if you climax during a procedure, you're dead, Starscream. Your protoflesh will die off, your metaskeleton will break down, you'll turn into gumbo inside that exoskeleton of yours."

Starscream hauled himself to his feet, grimacing with pain. "No, he's not touching me!"

Prime backed off, he didn't want to be here, didn't want to see Starscream's face so twisted with fear and suffering and be the cause of it. "Ratchet, please..."

Ratchet wasn't finished, following Starscream around the medic room, yelling, "Then who? Who have you shared bodysex with? Who have you bared your protoflesh to? The base rumours count at least ten mechs! You tell me who they are Starscream, or you can forget about ever flying again, you can forget about it!"

Cornered, Starscream shrieked, "No-one! I've had no-one else, no-one!"

He fled the room, dragging his broken foot so that it left gouges in the floor, echolocations as static as sobs. Prime made to run after him, and Perceptor leapt in front of Prime. He would never be able to hold Prime back, but he threw his weight and heft into Prime's body anyway and yelled, "Leave him alone! You want to damage him again?"

Prime pushed him back.

"Everyone said that he was your lover, and you never said otherwise?" Prime didn't know whether to be angry or amazed. All those nights he had burnt himself up with jealousy, and Starscream had had no other lover here but him? Oh, he'd had Decepticon lovers, brief couplings in order to advance himself, but nothing like what they'd shared.

Or so he'd said, just that Prime had chosen not to believe it.

Chosen not to believe him.

"Why shouldn't I let everyone believe it?" cried Perceptor, "He has no-one here. No-one! Who would touch him in his condition? Who would tell him he was not some broken, worthless thing?"

"I would have, given the chance."

Perceptor laughed. "Oh, of course, the great Optimus Prime taking a crippled Decepticon slave as a bond-mate? That would never have happened and you know it."

Perceptor turned from him with disgust and went to follow Starscream.

Ratchet patted Prime on the arm. "Gruelling."

* * *

It took a day. A long day before Perceptor came for Prime saying, "He'll do it."

Prime had been debriefing Prowl, Jazz and a quartet of terrified humans over a training exercise. Perceptor stood in the doorway, distress pulling his features into a rictus.

"Do what?" said Prowl.

"Take over for me." Prime rolled the memory cube across the table at his Second.

Prowl caught the crystal hemisphere before looking at Jazz, puzzled. His bondmate shrugged, stared at Prime though his optic visors. "You watch yourself boss."

"Always."

Prime followed Perceptor out into the corridor, and waited until his sensors told them they were alone before he demanded, "So what made him change his mind? You talk about it in berth?"

Perceptor gave Prime a sideways glance.

"He dreams of flying. When he sleeps, it's all he thinks about."

"How do you know that. Did he tell you?"

Perceptor shook his head. "Because he no longer calls your name. Not like in the first weeks. Not when you were sleeping off your prion, and I could hear him through the intercom. They wouldn't let me see him, and he was suffering and nobody told him you were too sick to get up. He thought he been rejected. Thought you were avoiding him. Now the memory of flying is all he has. The only thing that brings him any happiness here."

"I thought you were lovers."

"He's done with that. All it ever brought him was humiliation. I doubt he will ever be able to come physically close to anyone again. You hurt him, Prime. Completely."

"You told him, didn't you? About how I was mislead about your intentions, and his, how I didn't know..."

"Ah Primus, I told him. He doesn't believe it. That, or he thinks you showed your true colours when you believed others over him. He's only a spoil of war, less worth than an Empty."

Perceptor stopped talking as they approached the med rooms. Wheeljack sat over a large bowl of grey goop being heated over a burner, and he let out a warning whistle as they entered in.

Starscream sat, as he usually did, on a storage crate, but his exoskeleton was shining, with bright patches where corrosion had been rubbed off. Prepped for surgery. Wheeljack's whistle alerted him.

"I brought him."

Ratchet stepped out from a darkroom, wiped traces of an odd-coloured energon off his hands. "Let's get to it, shall we?"

"Wait," Starscream rocked forward. "I want to make some things clear."

"Speak," said Ratchet.

Starscream echolocated Prime. Same inscrutable Decepticon expression - you could never tell what he was thinking.

"You will do only what you are required to do, no more or less."

"Yes."

"Nothing I say during this will mean anything, you understand?

"Yes," said Prime, feeling sick and nervous like a sparkling.

"When this is done, you will give me and Perceptor permission to sparkbond."

He felt as if he been kicked in the chest. No. "Yes."

Starscream nodded, serious face. Perceptor was beaming.

Prime pretended to sit back on some spare-part crates nonchalantly, but knew he couldn't stand up. The floor had slipped out from under him. A moment's freefall, then shell-shocked numbness.

"Okay," said Ratchet. "Let's do this."

He rolled his instrument tray towards the operating chair. "Starscream, sit here, back to me please."

Starscream turned his ruined face towards Prime before sliding into the chair, straddling the supports. Ratchet adjusted the side-struts, then ran a hand down Starscream's spine. Starscream let out a quiet sound. Prime was immediately on guard.

"Don't hurt him," Prime implored in point-to-point communication.

Ratchet hushed him, before continuing his examination.

"Structurally intact. Let's see the quality of that protoflesh - it's going to have to do a metric ton of work over the next couple of months." Thumbs over the emergency bolts, still buried in his exoskeleton. "I'll have to take off the mesh though. You're healed enough to do without it."

Ratchet picked up a laser-torch, and a thin blue line sizzled between two pins. "This might sting. you might want to disassociate."

"No, I'll be fine."

"O-kay."

For the next minute the only sounds were the laser cutting into the metal, Starscream's soft vocalisations and finally, the clink of the bolts rolling on the floor. Ratchet lifted off first the left, and the right mesh, sticky with unformed protoflesh and crusted lubricant. Starscream hissed something in Decepticon, and Prime was halfway to standing up and going to him before Ratchet said, "That's it, you're clean. Now I take some of your protoflesh, the cultivar that will seed the rest of the mass."

The procedure was over quickly. After Ratchet took a sample of protoflesh - a mercifully small sample - he busied himself at his lab table with Wheeljack. Perceptor took Starscream's hands briefly, and the exhausted mech squeezed once before letting go.

"Don't be here."

"Star..."

"Don't."

Perceptor gave Prime a look that spoke volumes, before leaving.

Ratchet pulled over a copper bowl filled with the murky grey gel. It was marbled with silver now, and undulated as if something living had fallen into the mess and was still twitching in death throes.

"I've always kept a couple of decaliters of this stuff, but we rarely use it anymore."

Starscream sniffed, suspicious. "Why?"

"Because, my comrade, you are a Decepticon. Of Autobot spare parts we have plenty, and we now transplant what we need, but a Decepticon of your specifications is hard to come by, especially since they burn their dead in the manner of Vikings. Human warriors of a bygone age," Ratchet added.

Starscream wasn't convinced. "Will it work?"

"It has before," said Ratchet. He didn't turn aside fast enough for Prime to miss seeing his features fall into grief.

It was now Prime's turn to offer comfort to his old friend, squeezing his shoulder, and saying gently. "I understand."

Wheeljack watched them from his place behind the lab bench, and Prime wondered if he knew the specifics of Ratchet's inexplicable emotion. They were a family united by longing.

"What do you need me to do?"

Ratchet moved aside. "Low tech. This-" he pointed at the gel, which was rapidly turning silvery with each passing second, '"is put on the bare protoflesh scar. By hand. You'll need to measure how much by feel alone - once you sense overload, you stop. No matter how much he begs."

"I'll beg for nothing," sniffed Starscream. "And I can't consider overloading right now."

"I think we've established that," said Prime, close to yelling All right Starscream, you don't love me any more, I get it.

Prime slid in behind Starscream, and immediately regretted it. They hadn't been so physically close since the day of their rescue. The smell of bare protoflesh made him dizzy. Starscream's breathing had become rapid, air percolating though his vents.

"Reach in," said Ratchet. "It's not made for you, so you'll not have any effects from touching it."

He dipped his hand in the liquid. It was heavy, and warm, and not quite physical - dimensions of dark matter and transformative isomers of flesh and metal gave it more than physical weight. It smelt of Starscream. He wanted to raise it to his lips, was about to raise his hand, fold back his faceplate, taste him...

Then he realised Ratchet was there, and he stored the moment away to savour at a time he was truly alone.

"Now apply it to the scar. Not so much... see how he reacts first."

"I'm not going to re-OH!" Starscream's body arched in spasm.

Prime ran his mass-laden hand down the vertical length of the scar, and the flesh was sucked off his fingers as the otherbody scavenged the mass from him.

Starscream clutched the seat frame until it crushed under his hands, and said nothing.

Ratchet murmured encouragement and left the room.

Prime took more substrate, applied it to the left scar this time, and Starscream was rigid as death, but every sinew creaked. Another handful, and a small squeak, quickly silenced.

"If you don't at least tell me how far along you are, I could kill you."

"Perhaps," gasped Starscream, "this will be the only thing that will make you give me what I want."

I want to die.

"What would Perceptor think? He'd be devastated."

"Someone, at least."

Prime smeared on another handful and Starscream let out a cry in Decepticon that took Primus's sacred name in vain, and Prime knew that tone, remembered the times when he had buried himself into Starscream, the last throbs before the cries rose...

One last handful, and- "Wait, no more."

"I know." said Prime. He knew.

He waited until Starscream's sobs had subsided. He was overwhelmed with tenderness.

"How're you doing?"

He touched Starscream's shoulder.

Starscream jerked away as if he'd been burnt. "Are we finished?"

Prime withdrew, exhausted. "Yes."

Starscream pulled himself off the seat with legs that barely seemed stable enough to hold him and left the room. Prime heard Perceptor's soft voice, Starscream's abrupt reply. Shaking with repressed emotions that threatened to drown him Prime folded back his faceplate, let the mass smear over his lips. His taste, of raw energon and high altitudes. He sighed Starscream's name, understood Ratchet's reluctance more than ever.

Gruelling.

* * *

tbc


	9. Before The Storm 'Part One'

Nine: Before The Storm (Part One)

* * *

He wondered sometimes, how it had happened, where the origins of their terrible infatuation had been; and perhaps it had been on that first day when he had tried to take the information from Starscream's spark by force, when Starscream had offered himself in hate and surrender and defeat and Prime had refused him - maybe then.

Or maybe it was later, after he walked out the door of the hangar, and four pairs of optics stared at him, waiting.

"Did you get it?" asked Prowl, "The information?"

Prime continued walking, hiding his rare and unusual indecision by gruffness. "We have to start laying some ground rules on how to handle this," he said. "Of all opportunities to reaffirm that we're not Decepticons, this is it."

"You didn't." Prowl clicked in concern. "Our first and best hope to extract intel about the greatest enemy Cybertron has ever known, and you didn't do it. Prime, if there's some security issue, then let me take care of it."

Prowl seized one side of his exoskeletal chest-plating, detached the black unit in preparation for interrogation. As he turned Prime grabbed him on the shoulder, hard.

"He'll destroy you, Prowl. Don't."

Prowl hesitated, then nodded. He'd done his job as Second, to make Prime speak aloud of what was bothering him.

"So what are you going to do?"

"First, we need to find out about the full circumstances of his capture. A mech so high-ranking should never have been alone and weaponless anywhere near here. Secondly, why has he even allowed us to take him in? By Red Alert and his crew, of all the 'bots? Starscream could have killed the lot of them. I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own optics."

"He nearly did kill them all. We were lucky to lose only Sparkforge."

Prime rubbed his battlemask, pondering. "I'm beginning to suspect that was an accident more than anything. Nevertheless, we'll go and find out."

* * *

Red Alert had woken from the stasis pool an hour before Prime came to him. He lay on the recovery berth and dripped conductive gel. Ratchet dried his hands under a heating element.

"He'll be okay. A couple of re-scans will be needed to take care of the arm maybe, but he didn't lose any mass, nor did he damage any exoskeletal plates past a shredded joint."

"Hey Prime," said Red weakly. "You see our prisoner?"

"I certainly did."

"I couldn't believe it was him. I saw the wings and I knew it was a Decepticon, but..."

"You've seen him before."

"Yeah. I knew his face from that job in the Kokular Banlieue. Knew it was Starscream." Red gave a half smile. "You weren't around, and Prowl didn't believe me...so I gave the go signal. Sparkforge...?"

"He didn't make it. I'm sorry."

Red's face fell. "I know. That crazy young 'bot was so excited to get some action he jumped on Starscream without any plan of attack. I never had a chance to tell him. He never knew. His spark was torn out of him before he hit the ground."

"Red, you should have called in before trying to take Starscream on."

"I wanted to be sure, you know? He has brothers that look exactly like him, and we figured, you know if I'm wrong, maybe we could take one of them on." Red hissed as he exhaled. "He was so fast. My arm was gone. He put a fist through Inferno."

"But no weapons?"

"No. But he was weak too. Hungry." Red frowned. "I've been told that Ratchet authorized his being given energon."

"They had to keep him alive."

"But he killed Sparkforge!"

Prime laid a hand over Red's own, sensing that he was going to get worked up over keeping Starscream alive. "The information he can provide will save many, many more of us."

Red turned his head aside. "Sparkforge only made his first transformation last year. His armour was still soft. He was just a sparkling."

Prime nodded. He let Red Alert slip back into recharge as he processed what he had learnt. A starving, defenceless mech was not one who belonged to any faction at all. He wondered briefly whether this could be part of a grand Decepticon plot to integrate an insider into their ranks. There had been murmurs from the High Council on Cybertron, reports of Decepticon activity in Iacon.

Piecing all the possibilities together, Prime discarded that theory. With any other mech other than Starscream, he would have suspected. Even among the high ranks, the most logical defector was easily Thundercracker. At a pinch, the Decepticons could even risk losing him. But Starscream, the most loyal warrior to their cause? Not by any stretch.

* * *

Prime entered the hangar. Starscream still lay where he'd been left, grey with starvation. Only his optics had fight left in them, and they tracked Prime with all the loathing a dying thing could muster.

"I brought energon," said Prime. "I'm going to release your stasis cables so you'll be able to eat, you understand?"

Starscream could barely nod, but his optics flickered. Prime cut the power to the cable tensions. The cables fell off like dead snakes. Starscream still lay there.

"Primus," he cursed to himself. Of course, Starscream couldn't get up.

He moved forward and gingerly pulled the Seeker into a sitting position. It was undignified as all No-Spark Hell, but he pushed an energon cube into Starscream's mouth. The jaws moved weakly and the mouth whispered, "more..."

Another gel, and enough strength returned to Starscream that he snatched up the third gel and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing rapidly.

"I'd be careful, they're concentrated."

Starscream shot him a withering look, then threw up all over Prime's feet.

* * *

"How long has he been starving?" tutted Ratchet. "I said for them to give him energon, not wave it under his nose."

"Not enough, apparently," said Prime. "He must run hotter than us. He couldn't process what I gave him. He's so starved he can't eat."

Starscream lay suspended in the stasis pool, spark exposed and spider-webbed with wires. Ratchet had struggled with the strange, advanced physiology of Decepticon sparks, had to patch through a dozen systems, and it looked to Prime as if a computer had exploded over his chest.

"That's the problem with starvation. If you lose enough energy, you lose the ability to process. It needs to be fed directly through the spark. Let's just say you don't want to do it spark-to-spark, know what I mean?"

"Has there been any permanent damage?"

"No. Lost some mass maybe. But I wonder if that's not a good thing."

"Meaning?"

Ratchet adjusted a power feed and paused. "The call to the Decepticon culture is strong. Its culture born from the gladiator pits, the Insect ghettos, the shadow-side of Cybertron."

"You being poetic on me now Ratchet? _A wild call and a clear call that cannot be denied_?"

"Prime, you know what I mean. He'll never really belong to us. No matter how we integrate him. You want to know how many Decepticon defectors we've had in all our history? None. They never stay, and if they're forced by circumstances to be here, they fade away. Whatever you need from him, get it quickly, because he's not going to be around for long."

When Starscream recovered, he was moved - with difficulty - to the brig. Not that he put up anything resembling a fight, but that nobody wanted to go near him and that basilisk stare, knowing that even in numbers he would kill at least one of them, guaranteed.

In the end Prime had had to escort their prisoner himself, and Starscream was perfectly compliant.

"I see they've got you doing the low-mech jobs then." Not quite a sneer, but in a Decepticon accent, everything sounded as if it was being said with sarcasm.

"Enough of the feigned ignorance, Starscream. You know they fear you."

"They would be right to do so."

Their prisoner was interrogated from the brig as best they could. Prowl and Jazz asked the questions while Wheeljack took furtive measurements to correlate with the medical data. Prime tried to compare the mech they had in the brig with the data of other captured Decepticons and found no match. Starscream was a level above them all.

As Prowl continued his interrogation, Prime sat back at watched in silence. He was more than intrigued by this familiar stranger.

Starscream's optics, so exotic. His face differed remarkably from an Autobot's, with those high, flat cheeks, broad mouth, chin angular and regal, rivalling an Alpha's for nobility. Prime had seen faces like Starscream's before, laser-etched into the walls of the Academy. The God Soldiers of the old order, the ones who'd lived before the Decepticons and the Autobots even existed. Megatron had appeared through the Decepticon timeline so intermittently, but this one had been their constant, the one individual that terrible race had always followed even though the dark times.

Starscream's anthropomorphic mode was lean and spare, yet at the same time it was evident that a coiled strength resided in those limbs and that streamlined torso. Prowl's weapons never ceased tracking Starscream, even as he sat cuffed and locked behind magnetic bars.

"So you're telling us that you had a falling out with Megatron." Prowl did not sound convinced.

"We had a disagreement, yes." Glared at Prowl. "Keeps counsel with Autobot traitors, and wouldn't you like to know who?"

Prowl waved him down. "You seemed in good shape when we found you. One would have expected you half-dead if Megatron was displeased with you."

Starscream gave Prowl an odd look before continuing. "If I were a lesser individual I would have been dead."

"You still found yourself obliged to fight our soldiers."

Starscream shrugged. "I thought they were Decepticons. Sent to finish me off. I was hungry - my colour-vision had gone."

Jazz and Prowl exchanged glances. Jazz said, "I'm going to play you something we received over the Ultra-Low this afternoon, and you will give me a proper answer."

The low fidelity of the long-wave communication made the words stretch and squelch, but there was no mistaking _his_ voice.

"_Autobots, I desire the return of our colleague and comrade. He is important to me. As a display of my goodwill, I shall return to you your captured friends. They are unharmed, and will remain so if Starscream is returned to me likewise._"

"Doesn't sound like any sort of feud there," said Prowl.

But Prime was watching Starscream closely, and never in his life had he seen such naked terror on another mech's face. It was gone quickly, like ripples on a pond, but Prime did not miss it.

"_Who does Megatron say he has?_" Prime internal-commed Prowl.

"_A couple of new recruits. Soft-shells. We lost them during a run-in last month. Thought they were dead, but obviously not._"

"_Triangulate the position of the communication._"

A pause and then, "_They're south of here. Prisoner exchange?_"

"_No. Get them out, but we're not giving him up._"

Prowl's door-wings fluttered in agitation, but he held his opinion until they were back on the flight deck.

Only then did he corner Prime. "Optimus, be reasonable. He's dangerous beyond measure. We must offline him and scatter his parts to all five corners of the galaxy."

"Striking lookin' robot though," whistled Jazz, ignoring Prowl's glare. "I can see why Megatron kept him around."

"Jazz!" protested Prowl, "will you stop?"

"Why is that?"

"I'm not going to have a prospective bondmate of mine looking at other mechs."

That was how Prime found out about their relationship plans, and it seemed so quaintly unreal in the atmosphere of their ongoing war, when peace existed, but only as it might in the still cold air of a cyclone's centre.

Jazz and Prowl sparkbonding - it was a brave, beautiful and completely stupid thing to do.

"Oh - congratulations," said Prime.

"Mazel Tov," said Wheeljack.

* * *

"You're sending me back, aren't you?"

"We haven't made that decision yet."

Starscream pressed his body up to the magnetic bars, optics wide. "Give me a weapon," he hissed. "Give me a weapon when I go back. I will not die on my knees like some-" He said a word in Decepticon hate-speech, and Prime knew that it was a very bad word, translatable as _one who allows himself to be enslaved and does not fight it._"Something happened. Between you and Megatron. More than just a disagreement."

Starscream's face was immobile, but his crimson-gold optics swirled with panic.

The time for caution had passed. He had known these moments in battle, times when their options had been exhausted, when a platoon had been trapped or cornered, no movement unless strong measures were taken. This prisoner, this dangerous enemy they could neither kill or release into the wild...

Prime stepped forward and released the catches on the magnetic bars, and Starscream stood in front of him, a killing machine, unfettered. Prime blinked at the way his abdomen tingled, like it did in the first instance of combat, fear and excitement and anticipation.

"You won't be exchanged. You're staying here."

"Here?"

His next words were impulsive. "With me. As my guest. They can't send you back, see?"

"Ah." At first Starscream looked almost affronted, as if Prime had said something rude. Then his shoulders sagged in defeat. "Of course."

Prime frowned. What had Starscream expected? Had he really wanted to go back? Jazz stood at the entrance to the brig, anxiety radiating from him. Prime heard the binary Autobot over his internal-comms, their simplest most emotional language, crying caution and warnings.

"Optimus," said Jazz. "Um..."

Starscream read Jazz's hesitation and all that it meant. Prime could see his internal processors grinding.

"Come with me."

After a second's hesitation, Starscream followed him through the Ark, and Prime picked up internal voices so dense in number it was like a swarm's nest inside him. He turned off his comms. He didn't quite know what he was doing himself. Starscream moved so silently, a razor-edge of a mech, uncouth enemy.

"Where are you taking him?" hissed Jazz, joining them. "And why are you turning off your internals?"

Prime spoke back in High Autobot, "I know what I'm doing Jazz. Trust me."

Prime arrived at the doorway to his quarters, and Jazz groaned, not even trying to hide his frustration.

"We have a guest room," said Prime to Starscream, "for visiting dignitaries. It's yours for however long you stay here."

"Good grief," muttered Jazz, earning him another displeased sound from Prime.

"We are not going to treat you like a prisoner. If you want to join us. Make that commitment. We can give you as long as you want, but if you want to go back, you do it now."

Starscream turned to Jazz, and Prime, then gave a half shrug. "I know my place."

Jazz glared at Starscream, and spat a few words in Insect Aspect, his creation-tongue. Insect was the base-language to Decepticon, a shadow-side argot, and Starscream understood Jazz clearly.

Starscream's whistle-clicked reply made Jazz vent hot air. He left without farewell.

"Whatever he said, he's only saying it out of concern. I'm taking a big chance on you."

Starscream watched Jazz go, turned to Prime. "You were with him, once."

His perception was startling. Cornered, Prime said, "Jazz is an old friend. We went to the Academy together."

"Of course."

It felt odd, to say the least, having another mech in his quarters, his sanctuary. He'd not even had a spark-partner there, on those rare occasions when he'd shared himself. But the guest quarters were perpendicular to his own. It made sense for a guest not to have too much freedom.

Starscream surveyed the Spartan accommodation. It was no different from Prime's. A berth, a locked console to Teletraan, basic comms. Hardly palatial. Prime could tell he had expected more of Prime's berthchambers, something to rival a Warlord's chambers perhaps.

Still, Starscream's lack of - not gratitude, because that was not to be expected - but at least _recognition_ that he wasn't being treated like a prisoner, irked Prime. He'd wanted Starscream to feel welcome. He didn't like those old inadequacies rearing up, the feelings he'd left behind on Cybertron to rot with the Thaumaturgie in the Celestial Temple.

_And why_, he thought, annoyed at himself, _he's a captive, worth nothing. Why is it so important that he acknowledges that you've done this for him?_ Prime had broken a hundred protocols just letting Starscream out of the cage.

"It's either this or the brig, and you don't particularly want to be in a cage for the rest of your time here, I think."

Starscream looked around the guest quarters, then made a decision with a nod.

"I shall adjust to my place here."

"All right. I'll see you later."

He left Starscream (In his quarters! Alone!) and returned to his people and a hundred questions he didn't what to answer, including the one he didn't want to ask himself.

_Why_.

* * *

He was kept occupied for several hours, as yet another unit of government officials arrived with their endless concerns of co-existence and loyalties and requesting help in some petty squabble between them.

Prime listened to their concerns, gave his decisions, was sensible and fair, which made Prowl grumble later, "Here's a problem, my friend has decided to keep a dangerous prisoner in his room that is probably going to strangle him when he sleeps. Almighty Prime, what should I do?"

"Perhaps trust your friend's decision," Prime replied.

Prowl folded his arms, doing it but not liking it.

"How's Jazz?"

It was always the one thing that could be guaranteed to shake Prowl out of himself. Prowl allowed himself a quick, rare smile.

"He's kind of upset with you. And me."

"Trouble?"

"Not quite. The Beast Moiety Elders are coming to ceremonially induct him into a caste. Personally I think it's a high tribute to our bonding, but Jazz -"

"-wants to stay what he is."

"It's a matter of pride for him. He's the only member of his enclave to have left the aft-end of Cybertron and he's got this fool idea in his head that he'd be letting them down."

They stayed and talked for a time, over the politics and machinations of Sparkbonding, which were hardly of consequence since Prowl and Jazz would have bonded even if the whole universe were against them. It was a pleasant vacation from reality, to argue on trivialities like a Bonding song, or who to invite, and like all vacations had to end.

Prime watched Prowl leave, and a small regret touched him. Didn't want to call it envy, because a Prime had to be bigger than mere feelings, but he envied Prowl and that one certain thing he would have in all of life's uncertainties.

It was in this mood that he returned to his rooms, forgetting that he was not alone.

He caught the crimson light first, the refracting off a wall, the tingle-sense of information across his armour. Saw Starscream, chest-plates open, spark exposed, polishing himself down.

Prime knew it was private, knew he should turn away, but the act entranced him. Starscream, so vulnerable. Such a simple, intimate moment that hardly registered as erotic.

Within seconds Starscream tipped his head up, saw Prime watching from the portcullis. He covered his naked spark with sudden, indignant modesty. Then cold anger flared behind the potassium-flame blaze of his optics. He lowered the cloth, let Prime look upon him.

Prime turned his head aside, his breath caught. _Oh Primus, that spark. Beautiful._"Sorry, I didn't know you were cleaning."

"I get drag," said Starscream. "If I let the dust build up." Still confrontational, he closed his chest-plates, moved onto his wings. Prime didn't move, watched Starscream clean himself. A quick restlessness made his chest tighten. It was wrong to watch a mech like this. But he wanted to look, and Starscream hadn't told him to leave...

Starscream huffed in annoyance. He couldn't reach his back, his armour getting in the way.

Prime didn't know why he spoke. It was bad enough that he had gawked at Starscream's bare spark so rudely, but his mouth ran away with him.

"I can help. Reach your wings...I mean."

_Stupid!_ Prime wanted to slap himself. Some bumbling insecure protoform who had never transformed would say such a fractured thing. He was a Prime. This was a prisoner. But a high note of excitement was buzzing through him now, as if he were standing like a crazy-mech on the edge of a smelting pool.

Starscream hesitated, then handed him the microfibre cloth with a bird-dart of caution. "Not too hard. I'll scratch."

Prime had never touched a Decepticon before, not unless they were dead or dying, and Starscream in the hangar had been just that. But a Decepticon whole and real? Never. He pressed his palm to the small of Starscream's back.

"This too hard?"

"No. But not to close to my sacrum plates...I'm...sensitive there."

"I'm hurting you?"

Starscream threw him an unreadable look, said, "No," flatly, and Prime felt his poor stupid brain only understand seconds later, and he stepped back, wringing the cloth between his hands.

_Stupid._"Get on with it," Starscream snapped imperiously.

He got to work. Starscream's exoskeleton was smooth, constructed in such a way you could still tell his terrestrial disguise. Not until one got close, saw all the planar surfaces under the glossy colour, the marbled mother-of-pearl tessellations that would unfold into that terrible killing machine.

And yet here he was, so delicate. Prime swept the red dust off Starscream with gentle downward movements, awed and concerned at once. It was like polishing the weapon one would use to kill yourself. He noticed some scarring in the plates, injuries that couldn't altogether be healed by transforming. Like his own scars, the body of a warrior.

When Prime was done, he handed the cloth back to Starscream and watched as he folded it with care, the only personal possession he owned.

"I'll be recharging soon," said Prime, "so if you need anything, you can raise Wheeljack over the Teletraan console."

Starscream nodded. There was a strange tension radiating off him, as if any moment he would startle and fly away.

Prime returned to his berth, lowered the lights.

He couldn't switch off. He looked at the door to Starscream's quarters. He was lying metres away from a creature who had many, many times wished death upon him.

Yet he had been so beautiful. Prime's hands remembered the sweep of planar surfaces, the tessellations along Starscream's flanks like a puzzle. Prime wondered, would Starscream have allowed him to touch more?

And that spark. Incredible. He couldn't help but touch his own chest. He had a sudden crazy notion of cracking open his chest-plates and touching his spark. Prime's early experiences with self-pleasure had been painful, and he could never bring himself to overload even if he tried, but for the first time in many years he wanted that feeling, of his spark touched gently, the caresses before sparksex.

Crazy. He could call up anyone now, any mech on this ship would come to their Prime and reveal their spark. They would not refuse. Even Jazz would not refuse, and he was about to be bonded to Prowl. They would all consider it an honour to share the Prime spark. An honour.

But would they want _him?_ Would their closeness come from desire, or duty? Would they look upon his war-ravaged body and caress him with eager hands, or merely allow the sparks to press together in the solemn and proper way? Secretly, he loved the extra-curricular activities that went with sparksex, but it was indelicate for a Prime to ask for such a thing, and his lovers were often too nervous in his presence to do much more than hover across his chest.

The door to the guest room slid open, disturbing his thoughts.

Embarrassed, Prime snapped his hands down.

The shape in the doorway was illuminated by Teletraan's constant rainbow chatter.

"Starscream?"

Starscream's expression was hard and resolute, of a decision having been made.

"What...?"

"Don't talk."

Rough words. Nobody spoke to him like that. For the first time he felt afraid in Starscream's presence.

Starscream came close, leant a knee up on the berth, and with a few strokes had opened his armour and revealed his protoflesh.

He could do nothing but stare. Opalescent, a million folds of subspace that gave off their own light, shockingly intimate, even more than a spark. And Starscream was straddling him now, quick fingers on his thighs and his pelvis and Prime could not comprehend what was happening when, with a groan, his own armour opened in simpatico and his protomass expanded into silvery existence.

Rigid with shock, Prime lay there as Starscream took his protomass inside him. _Inside him._ Into that glowing place. Prime's body juddered in unfamiliar response. The squeeze and release of the quantum tide. The ebb of gravity caught in a singularity. He'd never felt such things before. Fear consumed him. _Primus, I'm so scared._ Prime wanted to cry out, and was terrified to make even the slightest sound. Nothing but silence and the squeak of servos, and Starscream didn't take his optics off Prime's face, his jaws clenched as he heaved and dragged himself on top of Prime's exposed mass.

Prime thought, _I can push him off._Prime thought, _I have to tell him to stop._But the shock of it, the degradation. To have his mass exposed so deliberately and then placed inside another. He had only ever heard of whores in the Dead End offering this service. Even as a youngster in the Academy he had refused to speak of such a thing. And the look in Starscream's face - beyond hate. A no-look. Prime despaired of his sensitivity, read in Starscream's features that this was utter humiliation. The worst thing he had to do in his life.

"Please..."

"Shut up," said Starscream through gritted jaws, and he turned and looked at the wall instead, mouth pressed into a thin line. He did not stop the relentless push-pull of his hips.

Prime laid a tentative hand on Starscream's waist, a small entreaty to _wait_ to at least claim back a tiny part of this act from assault to consensuality.

Starscream slapped his hand away with a hissed, "Don't touch me."

They continued in silence. Starscream's beautiful face was stretched tight, his optics like two lumps of molten metal. Lubricant smeared down his cheeks. The worst thing, the very worst thing for Prime was that he overloaded, his first ever mass-induced overload, and it hurt. He couldn't hold his mass in. It spilt out of him, into Starscream's body. It felt almost as if his spine had been grabbed from inside and been jerked out by an unseen hand. He bled energon through delicate membranes stretched to rawness from mass transmutation.

It felt like the first time he'd ever transformed.

Wincing, Starscream disengaged. Prime's untransmuted mass dropped onto his stomach as if he'd been disembowelled.

Visibly repulsed, Starscream climbed off Prime and in silence folded his protoflesh back into place, cleaned himself off with a rag before walking into the guest chambers and closing the door. He did not look at Prime. He did not say a word.

Prime didn't move. His mass retracted, worse than a punch in the abdomen. He lay there in darkness, sore and angry and scared and embarrassed all together in one amorphous sick lump inside him. His dawdles and dreams of sparksex seemed like a joke, compared to this reality. The spilt massblood cooled under his hips, the pain in his belly fading to a dull background throb. Teletraan One's console flickered binary Autobot onto the ceiling. Mass-sharing.

He'd never in his life felt so lonely. He'd undergone a profound and frightening experience, and there was no-one he could talk to, no nearby spark to commune with. He drew up his knees, but something between his legs felt hollow and missing, as if his core had fallen out of him, as if in the passing of time from _before_ to _after_ he'd inexorably, permanently, lost a part of himself.

* * *

TBC


	10. Before The Storm 'Part Two'

Ten: Before the Storm (Part 2)

* * *

Recharge stopped suddenly, and he was thrown into a sick, lurching consciousness. The night before sat in his memory like a lump of unprocessed carbon might if it had lodged into an air-intake, fouling every breath.

He moved his legs, and groaned. The inside of his pelvic cradle felt as if it had been scoured out with steel wool. The pale surfaces of his exoskeleton were stained with sticky black slime, a mess that extended under him and over the memory foam of the berth.

Aching, he rolled off the berth, and tried to rub himself down, but the stuff seemed to have coagulated overnight. Tacky and hard to get off. He looked like a mess. In his condition, nobody would miss what had happened. They would know that he'd stumbled as a leader, had allowed himself to be overpowered, acted in a way unbecoming to a Prime.

The guest door opened behind him with a soft shirr of bearings and hydraulics. Prime stilled. He didn't know what to say. What could he say? He'd had to counsel sparklings before, when their boisterous play had led to too-early spark-sharing and the guilt which followed. He'd been fatherly and understanding. He'd been a fool. Nothing matched this.

Starscream saw the black smears on his thighs, the stained memory-foam. He pressed his mouth together. "You'd never done it before."

Prime glanced at Starscream, angry and hurting. "No."

Starscream made an effort to look emotionless, but a slight moue of regret touched him.

"Did it feel good?" A hesitant, stupid question.

Prime dumped the ruined memory foam pad into a crate. He wanted to yell, but only managed to hiss, "No, it didn't."

Starscream looked even more hurt. Then his optics hardened.

"The pain stops after a while. You may even come to enjoy it."

Prime wheeled on Starscream.

"And you? Did you enjoy that?"

Starscream gave Prime a long, low look.

He turned on his heel and stalked off and Prime punched the wall over his berth before leaning his face into the dent.

"Stupid." He muttered to himself, "should have pushed him away, should have left him in the brig."

But he hadn't and Prowl had been right. He hadn't been strangled in his sleep, but something close enough. He needed to talk to someone. Someone who'd gone through what he'd gone through.

* * *

Ratchet repeated in a monotone, "Mass-sharing."

"Yes."

"Which pair of stupid mechs did this?"

"They want to keep it quiet."

Clearly Ratchet had decided he was going to keep a strong opinion in check, for he became inexplicably interested in a muon evaporator sitting on the lab bench.

"On this ship? With hordes of bored mechs looking for gossip?"

Prime nodded, despairing.

Ratchet was rough with the evaporator. Pulled off the lid, cracking the plastic.

"What's it like, the first time?"

"It shouldn't hurt," said Ratchet tightly, tapping the broken lid and avoiding Prime's gaze. "If you're with someone who knows what they're doing."

When then charade was done, Ratchet leant up against the bench. "Split them up, Prime. You're here to report a mass sharing incident. If you want to keep the platoon from self-destructing you'll have to get rid of one of them. I kid you not."

Prime hung his head and stepped back from the bench that had been concealing him.

Ratchet shutter-blinked at the black-stained thighs and at Prime's wounded optics. The muon evaporator was forgotten.

"Oh Primus," he said, "Optimus, what have you done?"

Distraught, Prime felt the heel of his hand scrape down the long arch of his thigh. "It was an accident. I didn't mean for it to happen. It just hurt so much, I thought I'd done damage."

"Primus. And you're a blasted Prime, dammit..." Ratchet stopped, mid-rant. "No, wait. Optimus, I'm sorry. I forget sometimes, you're still young. I shouldn't be mad at you."

"Thank you, Ratchet," said Prime grimly.

"Get on the medberth. I'll see if I can clean you up."

Prime followed Ratchet's instructions, stared up at the ceiling as Ratchet attacked him with a solvent.

"I know it hurts, but open up, I've seen more protoflesh in my...that's better. Slag it, they did a number on you."

"I know."

"Now, am I going to have someone else coming in here wailing about how they think they've committed some sin against Autobot kind?"

"I doubt."

"Do I get to know who they are?"

"No."

"Bumblebee. He's closest to your age."

"Primus, no."

A quirked optic. "Jazz? It must be difficult losing him."

"Ratchet, stop. We realised it wouldn't be proper a long time ago."

Ratchet shrugged. "Then I commend you for your discretion. Anyone cavorting with a Prime would have made the gossip rounds twice around here." Ratchet leant forward and said with a hint of sarcasm, "Perhaps you should put them in charge of your Intelligence Section. You get leaks."

Once Ratchet was finished, Prime stood up, raw and stinking of cleaning fluid. Ratchet patted Prime's arm like one might do a spark-child.

"Do you have any data files on the subject?" Primus, he felt nervous.

"No," said Ratchet, "but I can tell you what I know."

"Which is?"

"You shouldn't do it. Not again. We don't have the emotional resources to crunch that kind of physical data. Secondly, it's historically only used in the case of extreme caste differences, like master-slave relationships. An act of erotic subjugation, if you will."

"Master..." He was even more confused now. "But I thought it was supposed to be some act of love."

"It can be. Done right mass sharing can be pleasurable. But the act has its source in the old ownership rituals of the Warlords of old Cybertron. If you were captured or enslaved, you were expected to submit to the one who owned you. Or your mass was corrupted before you were killed, so you couldn't find your way back to the All-Spark. Those kind of rituals."

Memory of Starscream, legs spread and protoflesh exposed, signs of damage to the pelvic armour Prime had never noticed before, his wail of "_have me in all the ways he has me._" Suddenly he understood. Suddenly he realized why Starscream had been so reluctant to go into the guest room. In his mind he'd gone from prisoner to slave, thought that he had to submit to Prime...

And so he did.

"I understand now."

"Good," said Ratchet. "Tell your partner to come see me if he has any concerns."

There was no more time to talk, as Prowl ducked into the medbay, agitated. "Problems, Prime. We need you."

"What problems?"

"Starscream's gone missing, we're going to put an alert-"

"No wait, don't."

"But he could be trying to escape!"

"He's not. He's not gone anywhere," sighed Prime. "Give me a couple of hours, I'll find him."

Ratchet only gave him a sideways glance, and continued with cleaning the last of the black massblood from the examination table.

Finding Starscream took less than an hour. Prime knew that Starscream would head out to the one place the other 'bots would rarely go, back to the hangar. He waited for a while, tried to get his own thoughts in order, before heading to the Ark's rear.

Starscream was there, sitting on a crate behind one of the decayed warships, a rusted piece of metal rolling between his fingers. He only gave Prime a brief glance, then returned to looking at the floor.

"Energon?" Prime held out a gel.

Starscream shook his head, but Prime pushed the gel into his hand anyway, and Starscream took it, cautiously grateful.

"I thought you'd have had everyone looking for me by now. I was waiting for the alarms to go off."

"You're not a prisoner. You have every right to spend some time alone."

"I've discovered another secret," Starscream was sombre, "about you. I'm more of a security risk than ever."

"Look, what happened last night...you didn't need to have done it. You never owed me anything."

Silence, and then Starscream spoke again. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I didn't know that you'd never...I'm sorry." Small heartfelt apology. Prime was suddenly touched by how genuine it was, how nervous Starscream appeared despite all his pride. Prime had a sudden wish to lay his hand over Starscream's, to comfort by touch as he would to any of his own people.

But Starscream looked so resolute and solitary, Prime knew that it would not be appropriate. It would be like touching Xaaron, a major faux-pas.

"I accept your apology. And it was an accident, you didn't mean it."

Starscream looked away. "No. I meant it. It is my punishment. I have shamed my people and my race. You own me now." Long sigh. "It is your right as a leader to use me in whichever way you want."

"I didn't want to do to you what Megatron did, I told you. Remember?"

Evasive optics. The metal rolled through agitated fingers. "What was between Megatron and myself was different."

"You're a guest here, you'll have all the respect afforded any Autobot."

"That I doubt."

"It's true."

Starscream was silent. Whatever was going on inside his foreign processors Prime would never know. He gave a short laugh, as if to a private joke.

"It is true." Prime repeated.

Starscream gave an ironic half-smile. "No, not that. Megatron..." Starscream exhaled from his vents and continued, "Megatron calls me a fool, stupid. Tries to belittle me before the others, because he knows they'll follow me. For once I have proven him right."

"What are you talking about?"

"My plan has failed, I've sealed my fate."

Prime frowned, and Starscream heaved another sigh.

"Among my kind it was considered a great honour to mass-share with me. I just found the attention a bother, a mild annoyance." Starscream's Decepticon accent became stronger, "But here, when my life depends on it, when it's the only bargaining tool I have left to keep me from harm...here I am loathsome, and arouse no desire in you at all."

Prime blinked his optics, surprised at his logic. "That was your plan?"

"I expected that I would give myself to you, and I could win some days on my life if you were...what do the humans call it...if you were _fucking_ me? If I was an object of some worth I would be less likely killed."

"Starscream, we're not Decepticons. We don't work that way."

"No," said Starscream, unconvinced. "Of course."

"And if you were trying to seduce me, you were fairly unconvincing."

"I didn't want you," Starscream's voice had dropped to a whisper, optics bright.

"That was obvious," said Prime, remembering how Star had shuddered in almost-revulsion and pushed his hand away, and quite unexpectedly he felt a deep note of regret. Prime knew that there was nothing about him that was physically pleasing, and he'd been reminded often enough. Most times he paid it no mind. But Starscream made his thoughts strange. Almost...almost as if he had wanted Starscream to want him.

"Besides, Autobots don't have a habit of mass-sharing."

Starscream paused, and with a furtive curiosity asked, "What do you do if you, ah, wish to share yourselves?"

Prime said the word in Autobot, but as Starscream couldn't understand he repeated it in English - "Sparksex. Our sparks are brought together, in proximity, and for a brief moment we share the one bodymind."

Starscream shuddered. "Too much, I think."

They sat for a time longer, neither saying anything, and Prime cast a furtive glance at Starscream, because yes, Starscream was telling the truth. To have been desired by such a beautiful mech would have been a great honour.

Eventually Starscream would find a lover here. A mech who looked like him would not remain without company for long. Strangely, that fact was like a thorn of disappointment Prime couldn't shake. His own blunt, utilitarian body was brought into focus. He was not created for love, had not received much affection except in small, awkward moments as rare and precious as jewels. He found himself envying the unknown mech who would take Starscream to his berth, who would receive a touch, a kiss, as if he deserved them, while Prime remained resolute, untouchable and alone.

"I'd best go now," said Prime, even though he didn't want to leave at all.

Starscream was about to speak, then nodded.

"I'll talk to our science team," continued Prime. "They always seem to have some kind of project going and, to tell you the truth, not many of us have the programming for it. They could use your help."

"Thank you."

Prime left, his spark jumpy-flickery. It was the most he had ever said to a Decepticon outside of an interrogation, and he was left with a sense of uneasiness.

He did not see Starscream again. The mech did his best to avoid him.

Prime lay awake in his berth during the next recharge session, and waited. A looming anticipation gripped him. Fear...and another feeling he could not name. Would Starscream come to him?

He pressed his hands to his pelvis, was aware like he'd never been before of the dark matter residing there, the weight of his body, the heat of it. Restless, he ran his hands over his thighs and abdomen, imagined other hands on his exoskeleton. Perhaps Starscream's. It had been so long since he'd shared even the cool connections of sparksex with anyone, had experienced the release of his own internal turmoil and shared his burdens. But as a Prime he had too many secrets, too many burdens. It was not fair to have someone take such a weight.

And bodysex - despite Starscream's apology, all he could feel was regret again. For beings with such long lives, the first, the new, was a sacred event, and Prime had lost that. His first experience at bodysex had now been taken, not shared with anyone. Only this brief interlude with an enemy who despised him. If only he'd managed to take control. If only he'd had some measure of experience, no matter how small, and not have the memory of Starscream's face so full of loathing. Could he have slowed it down? Made Starscream wait, maybe make him feel a little less like punishment and a little more like a loving act? Even if they were no more than enemies, even if it could be no more than lies and illusions...

He folded his arms around himself, needing someone to hold so very much. But who could ever take up the burdens of loving a Prime? An unbearable ache seeped into his metaskeleton. He stared up into the nebulae cloud of Teletraan's constant communication above his berth, and never felt older than at any time in his life.

A few days later he introduced Starscream to Perceptor. They seemed the most ill-matched pair, Perceptor so small and friendly, and Starscream with his fighter's coolness.

"You say you were a scientist?" asked Perceptor, nervous around this foreigner. He'd recently spent three months at Yale in the guise of a mass spectrometer, and ended up getting stolen by a fraternity during a complicated induction ritual. It had taken him a month to get back to base without being noticed. In that time he'd learnt more on human culture than the others had learnt in years. Not for him the dark undercurrents of Cybertronians.

"I was. Once." Starscream replied coldly.

"I'll, uh, let you get acquainted," said Prime before backing out of the lab and wondering if he'd done the right thing.

Later, when Perceptor reconvened with Prime for a meeting, the science-bot threw up his hands. "Utterly impenetrable. But you can tell he's brilliant. I can see why you like him."

"Excuse me?"

Perceptor glanced at Prime sideways. "You think I wouldn't know? The way you looked at him?"

"He's important to us, that's all. We'll never have another chance like this of knowing about the Decepticons."

"Oh, of course." Perceptor sounded like Starscream when he spoke like that. Prime wondered how deep their relationship went.

"Look after him, Perceptor."

Perceptor smiled. Then the smile faded, "Prime, it's not my place to say it, but don't let anyone know you favour him. Yet. Wheeljack tells me there's been talk about getting you paired up now."

Prime rubbed his forehead, annoyed. "I'm not getting sparkbonded any time soon. It's enough with Jazz and Prowl."

"But politically, it's what the Alphas are pushing for. They want to see a Prime bonded with one of their own. They've always been unhappy about the Prime designation from the beginning."

"They'll have to continue being unhappy. It's more important that we win this war."

Perceptor winced. "Every solar cycle that goes past I imagine the chances of that happening less and less." Perceptor's optics dimmed, as he accessed old memories. "I can still get glimpses, sometimes, of the Alpha caste as they were in the time of Alpha Prime. The Matrix and Alpha Prime were one and the same, back then. If you could just say something, perhaps show them that all in not lost, that Primus is still with us..."

Perceptor saw something terrible in Prime's optics, and faded back. "I'm sorry. It was a idiotic thing to say."

Perceptor left, and Prime touched his chest. The Matrix of Leadership still existed within him. As a Prime he could still tap into the undercurrents of his people, know their concerns and fears. But anything more, anything approaching the legends of the early Primes, when Prime and Matrix had existed as one bodymind, that did not exist for him. Perhaps it never existed for his forbears either, not for Nova Prime, or the Dark Prime Nemesis, and not for his monstrous parent, the terrible Omega Prime. All of them had participated in the slow decline of Primacy. All Optimus had left was corroded memories and ashes.

Prime watched Perceptor go. Starscream was a factor in the War's equation that they had never really considered. He would be a devastating loss to his race, but what if he gave his loyalty to the Autobots? The tide of this battle would be inexorably turned in their favour.

* * *

He gave Starscream access to the libraries.

This was possibly even more contentious than letting him out of the brig. Prowl was livid, but oddly enough his greatest support came from Jazz.

"That's the best way to win him over. Get him to know our culture. It's so much richer than Decepticon."

Hard to tell. Starscream read through the sacred histories and was critical, saying, "Is it all about coercion? Didn't any Prime even love anything over himself and this blasted Matrix?

"The Matrix is important to us. More than any mere individual."

Starscream sniffed. "Idolaters. Our spies tell us that it doesn't exist."

Prime did not reply to him. A religious argument would lead nowhere.

Then, unexpectedly, Starscream said, "Thank you. I know this would have breached protocol."

"I want you to feel welcome here, Starscream."

"You want to win me over to your side."

There was no sense in lying to him. "Yes."

"I'd be equally predisposed to giving up secrets if you let me fight-train. I can feel my joints seizing up as we speak."

"I know something better," Prime said.

In the days that followed Prime managed to convince a few of his closer comrades to allow Starscream to execute some aerial manoeuvres on them.

They weren't happy.

"What if this is what he's been planning all along?" Mirage was hesitant. "Weaponless he might be, he's still dangerous."

"We've never survived a battle when the Decepticons have brought in air support," Prime explained. "If we can have some idea of how to evade a Seeker then we can take out the land-based troops."

"What about Wheeljack's aerial crew?" asked Hound, but Sideswipe answered for him.

"They're still no more than spark-children. It'll be a long time before they'll have the exoskeletal stability to survive a weapons hit."

A few hundred meters away Perceptor was fitting laser guides on Starscream's weapons racks. They would simulate a hit, give the Autobots some indication of where their strengths and weaknesses were.

In the dust of the desert it seemed that they were all weakness. Starscream transformed into quicksilver death. Time and time again Prime's sensors registered direct hits on his soldiers, and none on the source. Even Mirage, with his stealthy disguise, could only manage a wide shot as Starscream rolled away.

At the end of the day they were exhausted and demoralized. Starscream transformed and stood in regal stillness, waiting for Prime's instructions.

Without warning Mirage appeared in front of Starscream and king-hit him with all his strength.

"Mirage!" yelled Prime.

Starscream might have looked reasonably close to Mirage in size, but the inertia of his hidden mass absorbed Mirage's blow like a breath. He wheeled around gracefully and gave Mirage a push between his shoulders, sending the Alpha bot skidding into the dust. Starscream placed a foot on the back of Mirage's neck. "I would be apologizing right about now."

"Never," screamed Mirage. "Filthy enemy, you should never have been allowed to live!"

Starscream gave Prime a look, and Prime knew that if he gave the slightest encouragement, Starscream would kill Mirage.

"Let him up."

Mirage tried to run at Starscream again, but this time it was Prime who grabbed him. "Show some restraint, Mirage. It's undignified for you to act this way."

His words made Mirage retreat, but Mirage still spat sparks. He shimmered as if in a heat-haze. Their ersatz defeat had humiliated him, but it was Starscream's easy overpowering of his attack, especially with his element of surprise, that had clearly gutted him.

Prime took Mirage aside and called Sideswipe over to look after him. Starscream was already walking away.

Prime caught up with him. "We appreciate you helping us, we really do. Mirage doesn't mean to be rude. It's his Alpha upbringing."

"You recruited Alphas?"

"We have a few. Mirage. Perceptor, but he cut his ties a long time ago."

"That's a lot of information you're sharing with me."

"It's a lot you already know. I won't underestimate you, Starscream, you could do us a great deal of damage; but you could help us immeasurably too."

Starscream gave a huff of exhaled air, but stayed by Prime's side. Back in the Ark, it was clear that they were both heading back to Prime's quarters, and Prime felt it again, that unfamiliar anxiety, that pain that was not pain, anticipation like a weight on his spark.

"I need to clean off," said Starscream. "Dust."

"I'll help," said Prime, blurting it out, and Starscream gave him one of his inscrutable looks and Prime knew that he'd said too much.

"Surely a Prime can find one of his lesser mechs to do such a humble task."

"Get off it Starscream," grumbled Prime, "you know I want to do this."

Starscream didn't really smile, and did not say any more, just handed Prime the cloth and waited, and Prime began to wipe Starscream's exoskeleton down, except this time each movement seemed to be charged with electrical potential. Prime found himself moving closer, and they both knew something was going to happen, this little ritual only a thin barrier between what their relationship was; and what it was going to be. Even as the Decepticon proximity warnings went off in Prime's comms and Starscream backed up against the wall, his knees open, his pelvic armour still closed. Something was about to happen, and the air was thick with it.

He retracted his battle mask.

Starscream, visibly shaken, averted his optics. He stared at the far wall. Prime took the dark chin, palmed his face back to him.

"This is what I am, Starscream. It's what you'll need to know before we go any further."

Starscream was evasive. His optics flickered from side to side. Prime was certain he was about to be rejected, prepared himself for it.

"You can say no. I won't hold it against you."

But the words that came were not expected. "They always said you were disfigured."

"Did they say that?"

"That you were rotted under your mask. But you're not." He seemed suddenly shy, like a young mech or a spark-child with his first exoskeletal plates.

"Maybe just private."

Starscream made no move to pull away.

"You can turn off your optics if you want," said Prime. "I'll understand."

"Do your other lovers do that?"

_Lovers._ Oh sweet Primus, he thought. It was going to happen.

"Mostly. Yes. Nobody wants see a Prime stooping to such banalities as pleasure. I know what I am."

Starscream narrowed his optics. "I want to look at you."

The moment was profound. A Decepticon had no concept of their culture's sanctity or sacrilege. It was time to leap into the unknown, to snatch up a chance from the possibility of no chances.

Prime leaned forward and let his mouth brush over Starscream's own. Rigid with hesitation at first, Starscream began to respond timidly, tiny kisses as delicate as a breath. Prime could not hold back the moan as he tasted Starscream's mouth for the first time, the synaesthesia of colour and pattern that followed, the rich gradients of light to dark matter.

Stupid with impending release he pulled open his own chest-plates, and took up Starscream's startled fingers, made him place his hand there, on his bare spark. Prime stifled a groan, _oh Primus,_ just to have someone touch him, Primus, he needed release now. He pressed his hand to Starscream's chest, "Don't be afraid, please..."

Starscream snatched his hand back, said, "I can't," and Prime saw real distress there. He stored that information away. So Decepticons didn't share sparks. The rumours were true.

Even with the possibility of sparksex gone, it didn't mean that he couldn't touch and taste, not when it was offered to him without conditions. Greedy from holding himself back from this for so long he roamed his mouth in the junctions between plates, lifting and tasting, each place having a different effusion of colour-flavour, and each spot making Starscream tremble and gasp.

Thrilled, Prime picked Starscream up and laid him onto his berth, began to explore the interstices at his knees, his thighs, the hip and groin, and Starscream was moaning louder now, hips rolling to some internal oscillation, hands clutching and crushing the memory-foam, and then the armour slid open, and Prime stared into Starscream's shining core.

Starscream tried to cover himself and scoot away, but Prime seized his narrow hips, hooked Starscream open with his thumbs. Reeling with the chromolfactory information, Prime wilfully dipped his mouth into that space, not caring that it could be wrong, that nobody might have done it before. He tasted colours he'd never known existed, began to sing in the vibratory frequencies of the Old Autobot poems, and Starscream grabbed a crash handle above him and spread his legs wider, back arched, groin pressed into Prime's mouth, and short moans escaped him, entreaties in Decepticon and English.

Starscream's overload was brutal, and he bucked and thrashed and cried, and sweet spectrums of taste filled Prime's mouth. When he pulled away, opaline strands of protoflesh followed.

"Primus," whispered Prime, looking down at Starscream's startled, grateful face.

Star reached up and touched Prime's lips with his fingers, the damp iridescence of his protoflesh still there.

Prime sucked the residual taste away. "You taste good."

"Stop it."

"You do. Oh Primus, you do." He circled Star as best he could with the span of wings in the way, kissed him with reverence and joy; and Starscream hooked his knees over his hips. Prime felt his bodymass expanding out of him, but it wasn't straining now, but a starsparkle of sensation as dark matter gained weight and heft.

Embarrassed, Prime made to pull away. Starscream caught him.

"You haven't overloaded."

"It's not important. I just wanted you to know it could be good." A fearful hesitation. "With me."

"Be inside me," whispered Starscream.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Prime reached for the switch over his bed, to cut visible light, reduce optic input. But Starscream grabbed his wrist, said, "Let me see."

Under Starscream's intense gaze Prime pushed into him, but there was none of the same blunt pain. Only a delicious heat that started under his spark and radiated through his body. Committed now, he hooked Starscream's legs wider over his forearms and eased his weight carefully inside, distributed his mass with care. He was nervous. Didn't release himself too deeply, but Starscream looked at Prime, with optics wide, mouth an O of surprise. Gasping with restraint, Prime resisted the urge to thrust hard, kept himself in check, utilized the self-control he'd learnt as a warrior and sparklover.

"Optimus," Starscream breathed and touched Prime's bare cheek. "I..." He murmured something in a Decepticon dialect Prime had never heard before. Prime knew hate-speech, their common tongue, and battle-speak, the most familiar to Autobots, but this soft chirp and whistle had no phonic base in anything that Prime knew.

Starscream made a _hnngh_ noise, another Decepticon word, arched his back and Prime mouthed Star's chin. "Tell me you like it, in your language. I want it to be good for you."

The optics were smelter-bright, and the Decepticon words were more like electronic noise in an ion sea, but Prime could tell how they were uttered in force and conviction. Whatever he said made him overload again. While Starscream was still trembling with sweet aftershocks Prime drove himself in deep, completed a circuit and himself overloaded with rapturous cries.

Starscream clung to him until the moment was over, showed him how to disengage without hurting himself, and they lay on Prime's berth, breathless and awed.

"Thank you," said Prime.

"What for?"

"That. That was...I don't even know if there is a word in a human language."

"I'm sure Jazz would know a word."

Prime quirked a smile. "He'd say it was 'pretty neat' or something."

Starscream looked at Prime, a frown crept in. "You have a problem with being seen?"

"It's tradition. Senses are not required for spark joining."

"There was more, I think." He ran a hand down Prime's flank, not covetous, just tracing him out in sense memory. "You don't strike me as being particularly vain."

Prime returned the touch, but his motives were less pure. "Please..."

Starscream let his legs fall open in welcome, and Prime fell upon him like a penitent upon a sacred stone, the name of his god on his lips.

* * *

From then on the locks had snapped shut. Prime discovered the parallel delight of being one who had never known joy, finding joy in abundance. He experienced a spark-wrenching pleasure every time a new emotion crossed Starscream's face. It was times like that he could believe his enemy loved him.

Starscream too, had only known the logic of Science and War, only acted in planned thought, in rationalization. Perhaps had only known bodysex in hate. Prime's innate sensitivities could feel Starscream's hesitation when it came to their more intimate congress, when Prime's mouth found the core of him, the way he'd push Prime's shoulders away at the moment of overload, gasp, "I'm not ready, wait."

Prime would be patient. He quickly learnt the places on Starscream's body that responded to touch. The small of his back. The joint at a knee. The interstice where the pelvic armour retracted and revealed the wonderful centre of him. He knew Starscream hated him for revealing this vulnerability, and Prime wanted badly to turn it around, make the act important beyond what it was - a prisoner trying to keep alive.

In all their time together, they never joined sparks. Starscream might have been coy with some of the more personal intimacies, but he was firm on not spark-sharing. There was no sparksex, no ultimate opening of his psyche to another. Prime decided that this was only a matter of time. Eventually Starscream would sense Prime was genuine. One day he would open himself in trust and love.

But for now this dance, from the long journeys in berth, or quick seconds snatched when nobody was around to see. Prime's life, once scattered out to multitudes and thinned out to insignificance, had a centre again, a source and touchstone. The world had contracted about him. Small things took on momentous importance, Starscream's finger surreptitiously brushing his thigh when they stood close at a massed meeting, tiny gestures of affection when Prime lay back, damp and exhausted from quick, urgent bodysex.

"You'll last longer," Starscream would say, "once you have some experience."

"Am I not good enough for you?"

A sly caress, followed by a kiss. "Your enthusiasm makes it good."

He was being played and knew it. Starscream had no recourse other than to be Prime's lover. As far as Starscream could know, to stop submitting to Prime would have him thrown back in the brig, so their lovemaking was tinged with a violet-green desperation, both wanting to prove something to the other, their shared and borrowed language not enough to express all that needed to be said.

* * *

"Ah Straxus, you're magnificent."

The training room was hot, holograms set to full density. Both Prime and the simulacra were taking a hard beating. The two attackers were vicious, striking him hard in tender places. He fought back, with equal aggression, pummelling jaws and torsos and thorax plates. Normally the day's tensions could be filtered away with a heavy bout, but not today. He was aggrieved and didn't know why.

Just maybe it was Starscream's words, the way he looked on from the sidelines in appreciation and excitement. Prime felt oddly distant from the rare compliment.

Having a berthmate was not all solar energon and bluecake. The new relationship had opened deep wounds in him, disinterred old hurts. The memory of a first lover resonated from a secret past, hissed words saying, _monster - no-one will do anything but despise you, and if they be with you it was because you are a Prime and no more._

A hologram mech slammed a fist into Prime's side. Prime struck out with an elbow, smashing it into the voxel face, followed with a swift kick to the knee-joint.

_Magnificent,_ said his enemy, when the people who had raised him told him otherwise. It was the enemy who needed to despise you, your kin who had to treat you with care. It was not supposed to be this way.

Prime clenched his fists and ground his faux-attackers to voxel dust. The steam still shivered off him when he turned to Starscream, looking for the fear in him, because after a battle he was more than just intimidating.

"Star, I have enough lies and flattery from Council Senators. You don't need to speak to me like they do."

Starscream was intimidated by nothing. He stepped into the active circle, his dark face a challenge. "You think I'm lying?"

"You're a Decepticon. Isn't that what you do?"

It was a nasty thing to say. Starscream leapt for an attack and Prime feinted. To late, he realised that the attack was a feint in itself and he was positioned off balance, enough for the smaller mech to topple him. Prime kicked out with his legs on the way down, bringing Starscream down with him.

Starscream didn't fight when Prime took hold of him. They stared at each other in silence, Prime gripping Starscream's waist, Prime wanting to ask a question and his words freezing in his mouth.

"Optimus, what's wrong?"

The concern in Starscream, that ruinous Decepticon accent speaking his name with such care, it was too much.

He rolled off with a hiss of irritation headed for the washracks. The hydrocarbon spray sluiced over his battle-damaged body. Armour could only heal so much, and often when he fought, Prime was careless over his own safety.

"You needn't play me Star. You have a place here. I know what I am. I'm not some blasted Senator looking for validation. I don't need false words from you."

Starscream snapped off the spray, glared at him. "And I'm not a simpering courtier from your vulgar Celestial Temple." His optics narrowed. "You can't see it, can you? They way you've been put together. The design of your body. You even defeated Megatron in unarmed combat. If I'm right, then your handlers have kept you under control by keeping you from _this_."

Starscream reached out a hand to the powerful slabs of Prime's abdomen, the touch unashamedly sexual, and Prime withdrew. "Star, anyone could walk in."

But Starscream still had a scientist's intellect, for all that he had taken on board the shallow brutality of the Decepticons.

"I know what you were made for. Optimus, our battle analysts have discussed your possible motivations and weaknesses a thousand times over."

"And you would use this knowledge against me?"

"I'm just telling you," snorted Starscream. "That I know why you'd not think of yourself in any positive term. The Autobots destroyed themselves with self-absorbed Primes. No wonder they'd create something removed from sensation."

Starscream slipped his hands across Prime's chest and down his massive arms where the armour of his alt mode lay in long strips of bright red. By the time he reached the corded bulk of Prime's thighs, their immediate future was written. Prime pushed Starscream onto the damp floor, let his mask fall and his lips catch the leading edge of Starscream's jaw, demanding.

Starscream leant into the kiss. Prime was rough from his previous exertions, still in battle mode. He slid a thigh between Starscream's legs.

"Will you say that, when you return to your people? Confirm this theory of theirs?"

A strange expression, as if for the first time Starscream was unsure of what to say. The way he looked at Prime - nobody had looked at him like that. Awe and reverence and fear, these were the expressions of lovers and soldiers alike. But never the way Starscream did. This was new territory. He was lost.

In response Starscream spread his legs wider and his armour folded back from his pelvic cradle. Prime did not take Starscream immediately. The uncertainties were crippling him. "Why do you want me, Starscream?" he insisted, "Why? I'm your enemy, the thing you've hated since you came on-line. Is it because I'm a Prime? Is letting me fuck you still just gratitude for keeping you alive?"

"I don't know," grated Starscream, "rust you! I don't know."

It could be none of those things. It could be all of them. They fell together, breathless and abandoned and desperate and unsure, Prime's belly slapping against Starscream's, his hip spurs sloughing nanite curls off the long planes of Starscream's inner thighs. He crashed and bucked into the terrible density of another mech's body. In his far distant awareness he sensed someone walking in, and leaving, and could not have cared less.

"Wait, wait," groaned Starscream, torn between ecstasy and pain. He pushed Prime away, knee into his stomach, the hot splash of protomass transmuting to silver and savage cyberemones. A shocking thought passed through Prime, a compulsion to seize Starscream's wrists, force them above his head and keep going.

"Star, Star, don't make me stop," he growled, almost a threat. "Primus god..."

"You'll grind me down to dust, Optimus," said Starscream between panted breaths. His optics were vivid with almost-overload. His hands fell to Prime's hips, he brought his knee away. Prime's cry of entry was guttural. But he obeyed Starscream's commands.

"Hold yourself steady. Just let yourself flow inside me like that...oh careful, there's so much...oh Straxus...like _that_..."

Starscream's pelvis bucked as if he'd been shocked, and he pressed his free hand to his mouth, an odd gesture, as if Starscream had never cried out from pleasure before and was compelled to keep it in. The moment passed, he fumbled for one of Prime's hands. He laid it over the interlocking facets of his stomach and let Prime feel how deep he should go by the heat, the pressure, the way the armour flexed and trembled. It was not the entry of an object into an empty space, not penetration but _potentiality_. "Feel that...now withdraw...yes..."

Their gazes locked. Prime yearned to know what Starscream was thinking. _Tell me the truth._ His own optics raked blue highlights across Starscream's lubricant-shiny face, could feel his features pull into a desperate rictus as he fought for control. The Matrix stirred within him, restless, disturbed in its death-slumber by these strange feelings.

Prime murmured in Autobot, a request that was too profane to be spoken aloud.

"English, Optimus."

"Let me overload inside you."

He felt Starscream grow still and tense, knew that he'd just asked an appalling thing. Prime knew enough from his brief lessons that mass-spill, the liquid culmination of climax, was not part of the erotic culture of mass-sharing. On overload you retained yourself and did not corrupt another.

Prime was rent between the memory of Star's expression, the first time they'd mass-shared, He had taken Prime's spend then, but it had been terrible for him too.

It was a test in a way, how far his enemy-lover was willing to go.

Starscream said nothing. Not yes or no. He held Prime's gaze, kept his hands on Prime's waist, coached Prime into a gentle rhythm until the desire crashed into him and Prime began to thrust hard, counterpoint to Starscream's gasps, and Prime wept in High Autobot, "I love you, I love you," even though it was far too early, he didn't know yet, he didn't _know..._

His climax knocked the breath and strength out of him. He collapsed onto Starscream's frame as his mass pulsed out of him and burnt into the delicate conservation of Starscream's body, and it was Starscream who vocalised at the exchange, his heels raking the nanites from the back of Prime's legs, hands clawing at a scapula-section, marking him.

Prime disengaged from their amplexus carefully, Starscream still shook, receptors heightened. Prime knelt between Starscream's thighs as if between a silver-smeared altar, sung into Starscream, bringing the overload from him. The colourtaste of Star's flesh was dark with his own mass, heavy with pleasure and portent. Prime's chest spangled, he rubbed the plates, afraid to touch his spark lest he demand that from Star, ruin the moment. There were so many new feelings to process, physical and emotional. It was as if he'd been switched on to sentience and didn't know what to do with himself.

Finished, Prime rolled onto his back beside Starscream. His abdominal cavity still ached from mass-release and overload, a combination that wasn't entirely unpleasant. The seeker's wings served to put distance between their bodies. As usual Prime was at a loss at how to manage this quiet time. He'd noticed that Starscream was withdrawn after the tender violence of bodysex, as if the closeness was always too much for him.

One shower nozzle still dripped. They lay in silence, watching each drop coalesce; fall to the floor, splash amidst eddies of silver and pink-tinged chrome.

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking, at least I can still clean off."

Prime turned to look at Starscream, fearing rebuke and found playfulness instead. "That is," Starscream continued, "if you don't want to go again."

* * *

The time for another round of mass sharing could not be seized out of thin air. Prime knew he would have given anything to spend the rest of the afternoon on that cold floor. Life seemed to cast off its debris and impurity when he was with Starscream. It was more than just bodysex, though that was a huge part of the distraction, but Starscream's dismissal of all the walls and boundaries of Prime's proscribed life.

Prime watched as Starscream rinsed himself down, letting the silver swirl away, and watched as he left, and sat for a few moments more, alone and confused.

After the meetings and orders and administrations that marked his measure as a leader, he found Starscream again. He took the opportunity to snatch up some shared moments from the longer, lonely hours of his constant duty.

"Why did you leave the Temple?" Starscream asked him in the middle of a delicate operation involving solar cells and energon-collection arrays.

Perceptor had welcomed having an extra set of hands to help him out with his projects. Starscream was often invited up on the exposed roof of the Ark to mess around with the various ephemera of Perceptor's experiments.

Though he was not really suited for delicate work, Prime duly held the solar-plates as Starscream wired them together. Perceptor and Wheeljack worked several meters away, talking in their click-clacky scientist's cant.

"What I mean to say is," continued Starscream, "We are all very aware that the Celestial Temple makes up the central government of Cybertron. _Autobot_-ruled Cybertron," he corrected. "It would seem odd that you would not be at the seat of power there."

"Perhaps it's because I'm a Prime, and not a Councillor."

"You would outrank any Councillor. Even Emirate Xaaron."

Prime nodded absently, and let Starscream have access to one of the plates. Their fingers brushed, setting off little jolts and sparks of static electricity.

"A Prime is more than a leader," said Prime. "He is a living god, the holder of the Matrix of Leadership, the living fragment of Primus."

Starscream cut a wire, then gave Prime a low look. "Is it my command of this pitiful human language, or am I really detecting impersonality here? _He_ is a living god, not _I am a living god_."

"There you go," said Prime. "A living god. The Matrix is voiceless and unresponsive within me. It might as well be dead."

"The Matrix of Leadership?" Starscream made a face. "Why would an inanimate object be spoken of in terms of life and living?"

Prime's shrug earned him an angry note to keep his hands steady before he continued.

"In the songs and narratives of early Cybertron the Matrix and Prime talk as one being, a single united force."

"They speak? How?" Starscream was suspicious.

"Who knows? I've never been allowed to ask. My predecessor was just a life support automaton, and before him, Nova Prime, dead. There are things that a Prime can only let another Prime know, but that line is broken and the Matrix is just a cog in my machinery now. A radio for sensing Cybertron, and little else."

Starscream blew air out of his shoulder-vents. "No wonder your Elders cast you so easily out onto the battlefield if they considered you so broken."

"Proving them wrong was my greatest victory."

"Still, you never answered my question. Why didn't you stay there?"

Prime sat back, slung his elbows over his knees the way Starscream sometimes did. The memory was an unpleasant one, not something he wished to dredge up.

"After my inception by Alpha Trion...when they discovered I could not speak with the Matrix, my value was reduced. I knew what I was." He looked aside, suddenly hateful of his past, of what he'd gone through. "Starscream, you don't want to hear this."

"Go on. I'm going to be out here stitching up blasted solar panels for the half-litre of energon this whole mess will end up making." He waved a dismissive hand at Wheeljack, identifying the culprit who had mirror-panelled the Ark's nose.

"It could change things, you knowing."

"Try me."

Prime huffed at Starscream's tone. He was trying to be serious. "Let's assume that you share my berth simply because I'm a Prime. Would it make me less appealing to you if I said I might not be a Prime at all, just some container for a dead god?"

Starscream looked about slyly, leant forward and slid his hand over Prime's knee. "They aren't looking Optimus. Tell me now and we could test your theory out."

Prime pushed Starscream's hand away, shocked and secretly delighted. He'd had lovers who - while never outright rejecting him - had been disappointed that the sacred Matrix was not a mysterious piece of Primus and really a twist of wreckage in his chest.

"In the Temple I was kept alive and not much more. It was not a life."

"Your time there - it was unpleasant?"

Prime nodded. It seemed strange to talk about this personal thing to a mech who probably wished him little more than harm. But when he was in Starscream's arms, when Starscream sighed his name during overload, it was the vulnerability he could believe in. And he confessed to him now.

"They hurt me. The priests, the Thaumaturgie of the Celestial Temple. I often suspected they were punishing me, for not being a true Prime. Only when I joined the Autobot Academy, fought Megatron and defeated him, did I become something else. A Warrior. A Leader. The army would follow me, when before they were divided, and would follow no one."

Starscream picked up a loose panel. A yellow sunlight reflection played off the rock-wall. "I remember. I remember how we were almost driven to extinction when the Autobots fought back. You were like a recharge-nightmare to us. The ones who returned told such stories, how you were constructed of death and rust and putrefaction. They said that you could not be hurt, that you felt no pain."

Prime didn't want to look at Starscream. He didn't want to remember his expression when he straddled him, took his mass that first day.

"Is that what you meant Star, when you said you thought I was rotted under my mask?"

"Yes."

"Believing that, you still came to my berth?"

"I was at an impasse, then."

He couldn't let it go. Wanted to push at the worst of Starscream's motivations, because to consider the opposite was to consider something impossible.

"I saw your face. Maybe you've only learnt to control your emotions. Maybe I still disgust you and all this is you trying to make a place here."

Starscream made suitably offended noises. "Rust you!"

"It could very well be true," said Prime, self-flagellating now. "Your people are right. This body is little more than a sarcophagus, a coffin. Sometimes I cannot bear living within it." He dropped his voice, realising he would be loud enough for the others to overhear. "The only pleasure it brings me is when I'm fighting. When something hurts me then it hurts _this_." He pounded his chest, his stomach, face twisted under his mask.

Starscream looked at him for a very long time.

"Then tell me Optimus, what it means when that hated body overloads and brings you with it?"

Prime shook his head, searching for an answer. Starscream read his hesitation wrong and was offended by it, leaping to his feet, fists clenched as if ready for a fight. "Blast you! Optimus Prime, you're so damaged in the head I should get Ratchet up here to rewire you with these blasted solar panels!" Starscream threw the rest of the gold wires at him.

"Star?" asked Perceptor, "is everything okay?"

"It's fine," snapped Starscream. He turned back and shouted at Prime. "I take you into my body Optimus, I let you spill your mass into me. I hold you when you overload. I'm not going to have you do that and think it not mean anything to you!"

Prime was mortified. Perceptor and Wheeljack stared.

"We're not talking about-" Prime tried to explain.

"Oh come off it Prime, they know we're fucking."

Wheeljack's optics widened. Perceptor averted his.

"Starscream," growled Prime in warning, "this is not a matter to be shouting around to everyone on this ship."

"Oh, I didn't realise I was meant to be kept in secret and shame!"

In his peripheral vision Perceptor was hustling a shocked Wheeljack off the Nose. It was obvious that where Perceptor knew their relationship Wheeljack did not, for their inventor could not have looked more stunned if he'd been hit in the head with his own solar array.

Starscream had had enough of the conversation and took a running leap off the end of the Nose, transforming and spitting fire even before Prime had a chance to explain.

* * *

"Optimus?"

In the hours since he'd been brooding at Teletraan's console she had detected Prime's inattention, and had surreptitiously diverted her processing allotments to other, more pressing concerns.

When Prowl's long shadow spilt across the bridge floor and obscured her screen, Prime hardly noticed.

"Optimus?" Prowl said again, and slid next to Prime. The constant dust shushed underneath his feet. "I've been looking for you. There was an emergency meeting called on the comm-link. You didn't get it?"

"I got it."

"You didn't think it was necessary for you to come?"

"I'm sure you handled it well enough."

Prowl leant forward, turned on the navigator's console. The tired, ancient phosphenes stuttered false colour. "Hmm. That's a big empty sky, Prime."

"Shouldn't you be with Jazz?"

Prowl shook his head. "Actually, until the bonding ceremony, we're supposed to stay apart."

"That's just a tradition," he said, and the phrase echoed in his memory.

"We need to keep as many as possible, here." Prowl shifted in a seat far too small for him. "Jazz wanted it that way. I can't deny him."

"He'll appreciate it."

There was a moment, then Prowl said carefully, "You've shared sparks with Jazz a few times." The emphasis was on _few._

"He was there when I needed him."

Prowl did not speak at first. Jazz and Prime had come together more than what would be deemed proper for a leader establishing the protocol or spark-intimacy among his closest soldiers.

"I can feel you, when I'm with him sometimes. You occupy a large part of his spark Optimus. He was very fond of you. Still is."

"He was my first real friend, back then. You remember, Prowl?"

Prowl nodded. Of course he remembered. He'd been in charge of the Autobot Army, practically their highest ranked Leader himself, when the Council had come to him with a poisoned gift. Sacred minder for their newly created Prime. Worse than a demotion, his new position took every bit of power and influence from him.

Prowl had commanded legions, and all of a sudden he was reduced to caring for a reborn in a locked-off section of the Temple. He might have well been condemned to death.

"Some of the things I've lived with...what the Thaumaturgie did to you back then..."

Prime's look of _stop_, made Prowl retreat.

"I'm sorry. I don't want to bring it up, but if I'd known what they were doing was wrong, I wouldn't have let them, you understand?"

"It had to be done," said Prime. "The Matrix..."

"Blast the Matrix! You were young, vulnerable, and I let you down. I won't let that happen again."

"I'm not so young any more."

"Don't be too sure Optimus. I've got juniors who can count more solar cycles than you, and I still don't expect them to know everything. Body maturity and spark maturity are not the same things."

"But you haven't come here to tell me this."

His Second made a nervous, almost imperceptibly quick gesture.

"I still have sources in the Temple Proper. There has been - talk."

"Of what?"

"Having the Prime reinstated in the Temple. Which of course means you."

Prime's expression was dark. "I'm not going back there, Prowl. I'll visit Cybertron, I'll do all the diplomatic duties that are required of me, but I'm not stepping foot inside the Temple again."

"There is another option." Prowl paused, and Prime knew that what he had come to tell him was this.

"You could sparkbond. Join sparks with a mech and have them go in your place. As a Prime Consort they will circumvent you having to be on Cybertron."

Teletraan was singing to another computer relay, and her binary song was harsh in the empty room.

"It's not unreasonable," continued Prowl. "Nova Prime's consort was practically Prime when Nova passed. Nemesis left Magnus behind to rule while he scouted for exploitable worlds...even further back, even before Alpha Prime, I'm certain. If you nominate an appropriate Consort, we could solve several political issues at once. Prime, this is important. You should consider it."

"But if I sparkbond, that completes the circuit. I won't be able to have any other."

"You won't need any other. Once you're bonded, you won't want another."

He didn't known where it came from, that flood of panic, like being caught in the open during a mortar attack.

"That's too much of a sacrifice."

"Losing you to those slagging priests at the Temple would be a sacrifice! What if they decide the Matrix doesn't need you and they have it removed? If you're there, they can do that! Send a Consort in your place, Prime, don't let them near you."

"I'll always be within their reach on Cybertron. A mere Consort can't protect me."

"But you're still protected under the Alpha Prime laws of Prime-In-Absentia. Please Optimus. Listen to me, this is important. If you bond, you pass on what is Prime to another and maybe..." An unearthly light seemed to radiate Prowl from within. "A new generation. If we could dare to believe."

Prime stood up from the chair. "It's too big a decision. I can't make it now."

"I know why you can't!" Prowl's cry was shrill, an accusal shouted across the empty command bridge.

Prime stopped. Teletraan's jittery diodes turned Prowl into an ominous, shifting form, like a mech on the verge of transformation.

"One of the scouts went into the washrack this morning. He saw something. He's a good soldier Prime, he doesn't talk. He came straight to me."

Prime didn't drop his gaze. He wanted to challenge Prowl then and there, was ready to fight him if he had to.

"You're in dangerous territory," Prowl said, unable to make his voice raise above a whisper. "Starscream-"

"Don't," said Prime in warning. "Don't bring him into this."

Prowl continued. He was no puppet Second, he was there to advise Prime and he was advising him now.

"Starscream was known to be Megatron's lover for a long time. His lover, Optimus! He knows how to manipulate powerful mechs, Decepticon and Neutral alike. He's never been delicate when it comes to...being with others. He's always used bodysex to get what he wants. He'll tell you anything to get you to submit to him. The intel is all there, and you know it yourself."

"I'd appreciate it if you leave now, Prowl."

"Primus damn it!" Prowl cursed. "I'm not telling you what not to do! Your choices are your own! Sweet Primus, maybe the crazy Decepticon really does regard you in fondness, and not as the enemy he's threatened to kill when Megatron could not. Fuck him if you want, you're a Prime, it's your business what you do with a prisoner-"

Prime began walking away and Prowl followed him, sharp with exasperation, "Go! But you can't let him be a factor in your survival. You must nominate a Consort before the Council meets again!"

The blast doors closed on Prowl, locking him out. Molten with anger and despair Prime half stumbled to his quarters, fearing he would lose control before he could be alone, the Matrix like a lump of _nothing_ under his spark, a sick vacuum of lightless horror.

He almost fell into his room, slammed his fist into the wall. The rivets popped and buckled in the superstructure.

"Rust you," he grated through clenched jaws, "Rust you all."

"Optimus?"

He about-faced. Starscream sat on his berth, feet carbon-tinged from overuse, his nanites half-scored away from flying through a sandstorm. He looked harrowed, energon-starved.

"Why have you come back here?" Prime growled. "You should have kept going."

"I should have." His crimson optics were wild. "You have the capacity to hurt me Prime. I'm a fool to come back."

Prime approached Starscream. The cyberemones coming from the seeker were raw with uncertainty. Duplicity perhaps? Was he debating whether to kill Prime outright or have him taken down in some more cunning way? Starscream was dangerous. Prime raised his hands, grasped Starscream's arms in shaking, almost brutal stillness before pulling away.

He couldn't look at him. _At an impasse._

"You were with Megatron, before?"

"Yes."

"Were you with him like you were with me?"

"Yes," said Starscream, and his voice had gone into the low-fidelity of confusion, echoing and small.

"Did you take his mass inside you? Did he spill into you?"

His fist was bleeding silver where he'd punched the wall, and he did not care. When Starscream said _yes_again, he clenched both fists and optics in response to the jag of pain across his spark. Megatron was a leader self-made, no inheriting of titles, nothing so common. Megatron would always have more attraction, this bleached, fearful thing that commanded respect merely by name alone. _You may have bested him in battle, Prime, but you'd never _beaten _him._

Sick with jealousy he imagined Megatron breaching Starscream's armour with the hot vermillion fractals of his mass, the negative energy co-efficient of his anthro and alt-modes so great he was molten with heat. Megatron would not be like Prime, fumbling and inconsequential with bodysex. Starscream would respond to him, would open his legs to that terrible Decepticon leader, cry his name on overload.

Perhaps Starscream wished for Megatron while Prime was inside him, and that was the worst notion of all.

There didn't seem to be enough atmosphere in the room. His metaskeleton had turned to razor-wire. His restless thoughts were shredding him. He almost staggered for the door-release, but Starscream was there first, pushing him away.

"Yes, he took me!" Starscream shouted. "Sometimes even in front of the others, in front of my own soldiers, took me as if to show them he could have anything he wanted. He would make me stand there with his mass on me like a whore, and try and reduce me in their eyes, make me less of a leader!"

The stink of hate rising from Starscream could not be synthesised. Prime was suddenly shamed at having envied Megatron.

"Primus, Starscream. I didn't realise. I shouldn't have..."

Starscream mouth pulled into a hideous grin.

"For all that Megatron tried to diminish me, he could never make me overload. He could never make me say his name when he forced his mass inside me. None of them could."

Prime stepped back from the door, hung his head. Nothing made sense in his mind any more.

The confession had exhausted Starscream and he wobbled over the corner of the berth. "Do you have energon? I think I'm going to shut down."

"Forgive me, here."

He took the last of the gels from his store, watched Starscream swallow them without pause.

They looked at each other across Prime's berthroom. Whatever brink they'd pulled themselves from, it still loomed close. Their remaining time together seemed measured in incrementals, seconds as fragile as frost on a desert floor.

_One day he'll leave, and not come back._

He wanted to tell him so many things. Wanted to say, _I want to be with you when you go._

Wanted to say, _I'm going to have to sparkbond with someone else, and I'll be changed afterwards._

They were not meant to be together, and the knowledge stole his breath away.

"Optimus," said Starscream, sombre with the moment and its importance, "if we keep going, we will be in harm's way."

"I don't want this to stop."

"I don't think you understand." He looked aside, and in profile Prime could see the turmoil in him, like a predatory bird caught in a trap. "If I stay with you, you're going to damage me, and I'm going to let you do that. Do you understand what that means? I never allowed anyone so close."

"Star, I would never-"

Starscream turned on him, savage. "_Swear on your god!" _he said, and a Dead-End oracle never looked so fraught with the horror of foresight, _"swear on your dead god you won't ever hurt me!_"

Prime didn't know how to handle such naked emotion from another mech, but his body did, that part of him he hated so much now responded for him, put his arms around Starscream and kissed him, fierce with a promise that could never be kept. Starscream returned the embrace - if it could even be called that - Prime had held dying mechs like this, felt their rage against inevitability, their hanging on to him as if he were bulk enough to stop time.

It was so wrong, to take advantage of the situation, to lay Starscream upon the berth with such unadorned affection and caress him until his back arched and his wings retraced, aerodynamic frame sinuous under Prime's touch. Wrong to kiss the wind-scored armour until silence became punctuated by the sobs of arousal, wrong to taste in each flex of plating the osmotic push of lubricant and become hungry for more.

Wrong, because Starscream could not say _no_, and Prime knew that Star did not need bodysex now, not mere minutes after speaking of what Megatron had done to him. Prime's hand escaped to his own stomach, between his legs, and with furious shame he stroked his armour at the same time willing it to keep shut. He battled with himself, until his better half won. Groaning with restraint he pulled away.

"You need to rest, Star." His voice was hoarse. "You need to recharge."

He couldn't read Starscream, not the Decepticon in him, the foreign scent of his cyberemones. Couldn't tell what his silence meant. His hands folded within Starscream's smaller own for several long seconds before he lay next to him, fierce with promise, and angry at them all.

* * *

The gears and tumblers of their relationship turned. Doors opened to love were closed in other places. To be let into one part of Starscream's existence was to be denied another.

"I can't stay in your quarters permanently." Starscream said a week later. "It's like being owned."

"But Star, it's an honour. I won't ask you if it wasn't."

"Autobots," sniffed Starscream. "I want some blasted independence. Perceptor has a spare berth-rack up on the Ark Nose."

"I thought that was Wheeljack's berth."

"Perceptor asked him to give it up. He's got a room next to Ratchet anyway." A pause, then, "I'll be moving there tonight."

"What is it with you and Perceptor anyway?"

"You made me be friends with him."

"Yes," said Prime, not keeping the bewilderment out of his reply, "just so as a scientist you'd have someone to talk to. Not to replace me."

Starscream dismissed his fears with a look. "There's no need to be jealous."

"I'm not." But he was.

"I enjoy his company because he is not a complete idiot, he can speak Plaintalk, and this human language is tiresome."

"Will I become tiresome?" A touch of resentment, that Starscream was not his alone. "Are you going to open your legs for him if I'm not around?"

"Maybe I will!"

Prime pushed his mass in deeper, made Starscream arch and yelp.

"Ow, you did that on purpose."

"You're being cheeky now," said Prime. He gripped Starscream's waist, canted his hips up, transferred some of his infra-spatial weight so it rested in Starscream's abdomen. Starscream, fixed and straddled in his lap, let out a tremulous, angry hiss.

"And you're cheating, Optimus. You're not supposed to _move_."

Prime's hand traversed the length of Starscream's thigh, and the thick foils at his waist. "And this is supposed to achieve what? Other than making me nasty and frustrated for no reason?"

"It's a very appropriate technique, you uneducated Autobot! Not rutting and spilling like some organic."

"You saying you don't like it, Star? Mmm?"

Starscream evaded the kiss. "You were the one who said you wanted to learn the proper traditions of mass-sharing. Now shut up for a klick, I have to get my concentration back or I'll never overload."

Starscream was glorious in profile, the sun behind his shoulder, turning his body dark so it was as if a shadow straddled him. A broken guy-wire swung in the wind and slapped the antenna pole in random clinks. The radio-telescope dish was hardly an appreciable size, an abandoned project of a gypsy astronomer three decades before, but the concrete-lined depression was deep enough to hide them from prying eyes.

What was meant to be a lesson in mass sharing had turned into an unbearable torture. Flowered inside Starscream but forbidden to move, his mass ached, swollen and fractal-torn. This was supposed to be the height of sexual culture among Decepticons? It just made him agitated and halfway crazy. Forgetting Starscream's instructions, Prime cupped the armour housings on either side of Starscream's chest, let out an appreciative growl when he felt the spark-heat beneath. Starscream jolted, cursed him.

"Now that's nice," murmured Prime. "I'd love to touch your spark right now."

"This won't work if you don't keep your hands to yourself!"

"I think it'll work just fine either way." Prime ran a caress down the leading edge of Starscream's wing before reaching the small of his spine, the responsive sacrum-piece of his aft.

Starscream had been a better teacher than he realised, and as Prime palmed Starscream's sacrum, trailed his mouth over the straining cords of Starscream's neck, Starscream shivered, splashed hot chrome over Prime's thighs.

"It won't make me climax before I'm ready," Starscream said through clenched jaws. "Quit it."

"Didn't I tell you I'm not one of your Senators? You can't numb yourself to this."

"Shut up, Autobot," Starscream hissed, his thighs straining against Prime's hands, now thumbing the fading scratches left by their washroom liaison. "I'll overload when I want to."

"Mm-hum," Prime leant forwards and nuzzled a sensitive spot on Starscream's shoulder, was rewarded with another shudder, more chrome, pink scent of potentiality. "I doubt the decision is up to you."

Starscream made a move, threatening to disengage, and Prime sheathed himself deep into Starscream's protoflesh. Something obscene in Decepticon hate-speech spat from Starscream's vocaliser, a shout finished with a high pitched expulsion of breath as Prime abandoned himself to the merciless wrack of delight, the savagery of his body's language.

His body, the hated casement, came alive and spoke to him with such uncompromising information, profane and beautiful. He tipped Starscream onto his back and tangled himself within the flail of Starscream's limbs. His fingers locked with Starscream's own, his lover bucked and arched beneath him, heels digging into his aft, begged, "Harder, rust you, _rust you..._"

Prime needed to speak aloud, cry out in the old language of his creation and words even older still. Prime evoked the name of his god, the dark dead centre that had abandoned him.

"_Primus, Primus_," screamed Prime, and at the point of overload could almost imagine the Matrix as it might have been if it were animate inside him, multifoliate and monstrous. Starscream gripped him close, held him as the electrical tempest of circuits and quantum relays rocked him. Deep within, an acute level of communication opened briefly and was gone. The loss was like a death.

"Optimus," cried Starscream, "Stay with me."

His optics refocused, and Starscream was watching him with concern. Wincing, he pushed his raw mass into Starscream's chrome-slick opening until Starscream's protoflesh liquefied, until the smaller body tensed and released with a sigh.

Pulling free was painful. He was exhausted by the aftermath, and felt his culmination not quite as complete, as if a question had been raised and not answered. Thunderheads gathered overhead. The air smelt of ozone and a coming storm.

"Well, that was a failed experiment," Starscream said, rubbing his abdomen. "How many hours did we waste?"

"Would it have been better if I'd stayed with the program?"

A scratched, static laugh. "Straxus, no. That overload you gave me Optimus, rust you, now I can't even move."

Feeling guilty for having gone elsewhere in his mind, Prime leant over and kissed Starscream with genuine affection. "I hope that berth Perceptor's giving you can handle two mechs, because I'm visiting you tonight."

"Don't you dare!"

"I can't promise I won't be noisy, though."

"Optimus!" Starscream mock-punched him. "I'll come to you. Don't you have a meeting later?"

"Yes. Some Alpha delegation. It shouldn't take long."

Starscream stood up, brushing the silvermass from him. Prime watched in silence, certain that he'd ever seen anything more erotic. He debated kneeling before Starscream and singing another overload out of him, taste him while he was still ripe and sore from bodysex. He rubbed his mouth, wondered agitatedly how to phrase the demand delicately and still emphasise that it wasn't a request.

"Primus, Starscream, you're beautiful."

Droll, "So I've been told."

"I can't get enough of looking at you. Are you sure you won't stay?"

Starscream only snagged a grin. "They're an attractive caste, Alphas. How will I know one of them won't catch your attention?" A low growl. "You smell of sex."

He mightn't have been serious, but there was a hard timbre in his teasing.

Prime put his elbows on his knees, considered Starscream for while before speaking. "Alphas are well put together. That's true. But you're something else Star. You're probably the most striking mech on the whole ship. Maybe that I've ever seen. Why would I want anything less?"

"You have a weakness for good-looking mechs, Prime?"

"Good-looking Decepticons, perhaps." The desert amplified the thunder's bass. The sunken dish vibrated ominously. "You better see me tonight. Don't make me come looking for you."

"You won't have to." Starscream threw him a smile before transforming, washed Prime in smoke and flame before being swallowed by the sky.

The storm had broken well and truly by the time he returned, the sky blacker than a burnt fuse. A mudslide had fouled his wheels, so having spent half his journey on foot made him arrive late, and dirty.

Ironhide was waiting at the Ark's concealed entrance, anxiously pacing a trench forward of two bored young mechs on sentry duty. One of them hadn't even undergone his first transformation, his armour a flat, protoform grey. Prime winced. Young soldiers brought back memories of the worst days of the War.

The red soldier perked up on seeing Prime. "Thank Primus you're here. There's been a ruckus, I wanted you to get it sorted out before this meetin' of yours."

"What sort of ruckus?" Trouble had its own smell, that discordant colour and Prime saw the sentries glancing at each other.

"Let's get out of the rain, first."

Ironhide followed Prime into the washracks. "Optimus, you were going to find this out sooner or later, but our prisoner's found himself a friend."

His hand paused on the lever before pulling it. "Our prisoner?"

"Starscream." Ironhide was never much for hiding contempt. The American drawl made him even more transparent. "Perceptor's been fooling around with Starscream and it's made my boys edgy."

Prime snapped off the faucet. He'd learnt how to conceal his feelings. "Define fooling around."

"Sticking his mass where it shouldn't be. Or at least that's what Jackpot said, when I threw him in the brig. I was going to chuck Perceptor in there after him, but the Alpha delegation are here to see him and Mirage. Look Optimus, I think you better talk to him. Fraternizing with the enemy is a bad thing."

"Yes," said Prime tersely. "We'll definitely talk."

He doubted Ironhide saw the tension in him, the stiff way he walked. _Perceptor has a spare berth-rack up on the Ark Nose._

I'll be moving there tonight.

There was a reason behind it, of course. A rational reason. He would talk to Perceptor rationally.

Down the central spine of the Ark, and the War Room, their central meeting space. A figure in green livery stood outside the double blast doors, too agitated to be a sentry. Muddy footprints were tracked along the floor.

"Hound?"

Hound was a wanderer, a free-operator. He was the first of them to have made contact with humans. One rarely caught him in the Ark, and his presence sparked warnings. His optics met Prime's, and they were pain-wracked.

"Is it true?"

"Hound, I don't...?"

"Don't play games with me!" roared Hound, "is it true?"

Footsteps behind, Prowl running to join them. "Ah, rust it Optimus, I was hoping to get to you before-"

"What about you?" shouted Hound, pointing an accusing finger at Prowl. His weapons rig was still attached, an infringement of Ark protocol. Prime was in a mind to tackle this crazy soldier to the wall. Only a quiet voice inside him, the wisdom he'd learnt from the glacial movements of Temple politics, told him to wait.

"Hound," said Prowl, hands up in supplication. "Take it easy. It's Mirage's decision. He's campaigned for this."

"And what if they chose Jazz? You know he's a candidate too, just as much as Mirage is. Would you give him up? Even now? Even when you're about to be bonded!"

It dawned on Prime that everything could be connected, this meeting with the Alpha delegation, Hound's distress, Perceptor's sudden and inexplicable sheltering of Starscream.

"Yes," said Prowl. His features were rigid, his optics cold. "If that is what Prime decrees and the Council wants. If that will protect Cybertron, that is what I will do."

Hound shoved Prowl aside and stumbled down the corridor.

Prime was astounded.

"Mirage? And Hound? I never knew."

Prowl pressed his hand to his forehead. "Hound's been with humans too long. Picked up their romantic notions."

"I've never seen them as lovers."

"And now they are not. Look Prime, it would never have worked for them. Alpha to Beast caste. They have no future together. Hound knew this day was coming..."

"Prowl," said Prime, "You need to explain what's going on here."

"They've heard. The Alphas. About the Prime Bonding. They're putting forward their candidates."

"No," said Prime. "We never discussed this."

"We discussed this," returned Prowl. "We discussed that I would never let the Temple take you."

"Primus, damn it Prowl," Prime mumbled under his breath. He was angry, yes, but Prowl had always run interference for him, even back in the days when he was powerless.

Seething, he pushed open the door and walked into the middle of an argument. Alpha dialect was not the most pretty of languages, but it was certainly the best one for a quarrel, all those dissonant notes and jarring phrases. Perceptor was the focus of the dignitaries' rage. Mirage stood off to one side, trying his best to pretend that he wasn't listening.

"...our best candidate! How can you be so selfish and turn it down?"

The two diplomats stopped when Prime walked into the room, but Perceptor was not finished.

"I renounce my Alpha-caste!" he shouted. "I renounce it now like you renounced me! You can't have it both ways Senator Ferrous! Excommunicating us for joining Prime's Army and then crawling back when it suits your purpose? You're all the worst hypocrites. I'm glad I left."

Perceptor glared at Prime as he passed, an almost accusing look.

"Wait for me in my quarters Perceptor," said Prime, pitching a harmonic of command. "We will speak then."

Perceptor nodded. Prime returned to the Senator. Starscream was correct in saying that the Alphas were an attractive make. Prime had never seen a clumsily constructed Alpha. Every one moved with the grace you would expect of a Prime descendant, of a race whose descent-line from the god Primus could be counted by the fingers on one hand.

"I'll apologise for my soldier's behaviour, Senator Ferrous, Senator Catalyst." He nodded to each Alpha diplomat. "Life here can distance mechs from our traditions...and our manners."

"Apology accepted, Optimus Prime." Senator Catalyst gave a quick bow, but his mouth was a tight line of censure. Prime wondered where he'd seen him before.

_Perhaps a face in the crowd. When they would make you display your voiceless Matrix to the Temple Congregation, symbol of your shame._

Prime turned his head, not trusting his optics to remain neutral. Hard to approach this mech as a Prime and still remember that humiliation.

"Clearly something of importance has brought you away from Iacon and to here."

Prime knew Mirage well, could sense the anxious energy burning off him. Poor, confused Mirage, who had given up his Alpha-caste honours to join the Autobot Resistance when the Neutral Alphas were ready to align to the stronger Decepticons. Now his people were coming back here with their Teflon words of forgiveness and welcome, if only he would do something for them.

The Senators seated themselves at the long War Room table without invitation. It was the Alpha way. Their caste was descended from a Prime, the great Lawmaker Alpha Prime, a god-king who had taken it upon himself to engender a race of perfect mechs and had only managed a caste of self-important politicians and greedy industrialists.

"We heard that you were considering a bonding."

"What you heard was conjecture,"

Next to him, Prowl released a breath.

"Conjecture or not," said Catalyst coldly, "The rank of Prime has been irreparably reduced since Nova's passing to the All-Spark."

He was being insulted, and knew it, but Prime did not rise to the Senator's bitter words.

"An Alpha consort would not only win you a powerful proxy, Prime, but will give you influence over the Council. We hold the majority in the Pavilion."

"As I am aware." Prime was just as cold.

Sensing a breakdown in communications, Senator Ferrous interjected. "I understand Lord Prime, that you will not entertain the thought of a Cybertronian or a non-loyalist. Which is why we have discussed the candidacy of Mirage."

And Perceptor as well, but Perceptor had made his opinions clear. Mirage's optics were intense. Prime wanted to slap him. _It's no privilege, Mirage!_

"Then if we're discussing candidacy," said Prime, "There are many castes that want validation. The Insect Castes, for one."

"Bumblebee," murmured Prowl. "Cliffjumper."

"The Insect castes are insignificant," said Ferrous. "They hold no Council seats, do not participate in society."

"You need to be aware that the dark-planet neutrals will also put forward their candidate. They are not insignificant, and represent a greater population than all the sun-side castes put together. They have been powerless for a long time. I could avert another civil war by bonding to their kind."

Both Senators hissed, unable to withhold their opinions on the matter.

Mirage was stricken, and finally stepped forward. "Prime, there's only Jazz among us who has those associations. He can't be a candidate. He's going to be bonded to Prowl."

"They're not bonded yet," said Prime lowly, and he could hear Prowl's armour plates scraping against each other in alarm.

Catalyst stood up. "We have come and made our case, we have presented our candidate. If you consider yourself worthy of the Prime designation, then you will make the right decision."

"Mirage, see your caste-fellows make safe passage to the space bridge."

Mirage's face said more than his words ever could. Hurt and betrayal, and an Alpha stubbornness. Suddenly Prime realised that the Alpha delegation was no surprise visit. Mirage had been working on this for a long time. He had been given an opportunity to return to glory, and was not going to let it go.

By the time the Senators had left, Prowl was shaking.

"Is it true? You'd choose Jazz?"

"I'm not getting bonded," said Prime. "It's not happening." He put his hand on Prowl's anxious shoulder. "But you are, and soon. I think you should ignore tradition tonight and see him."

"Thank you, Prime." Prowl paused, as if he was about to say something more, then caught the blast-doors before they shut, leaving Prime in darkness.

* * *

Perceptor sat on the end of Prime's berth in the same place Starscream usually sat, and the visual dissonance was disturbing.

"Whose idea was it to have him move out of my quarters?"

Perceptor was sullen. "Alright, it was mine."

"Out of the three of us, it's a pity I wasn't allowed any input."

There was still a wide streak of Alpha high-caste in Perceptor, and he scorned Prime's naiveté.

"Prime, outside the pair of you I'm the only mech on this ship who knows your relationship. He's not a courtesan. He's not around as some pleasure slave."

"Perceptor, you haven't the slightest idea what I feel for that mech."

It was an unfair statement to make. Of course Perceptor knew. Even now Perceptor was protecting Prime, taking the heat for Starscream's activity.

Perceptor put his head down. "I've watched the pair of you. I know Starscream gives you something that's been missing from your life. It's more than just bodysex. There's something else. But Primus damn it, you treat him like a servant, you'll lose him."

"I'd have preferred you trusted me and Starscream to handle our own arrangements."

"Arrangements? He's a Decepticon Leader. He commanded armies. Give him some blasted space."

Perceptor's fervour over Starscream's conditions was strange behaviour. He always seemed such a solitary creature.

"Remind him he has to see me tonight."

Perceptor bit his lip, and his optics were evasive. "I'll remind him." He did not sound convincing.

"Perceptor."

"Yes?"

"Am I going to regret introducing you to him?"

Perceptor did not reply. He climbed off the berth. "I'll tell him."

* * *

Starscream joined Prime in his berth and they came together in pious silence, Starscream straddling Prime's hips as he'd done on that first night, but there was a deep design to the way he revealed himself, and Prime took Starscream's aft, scooted him up so he was astride Prime's head and Prime could prove just how better he was than all the others Starscream had ever had, every single one of them. Starscream clung to the crash bars, wet with chrome lubricant and the inescapable sensation of Prime's mouth.

After a noisy and enthusiastic overload, Starscream led Prime through more lessons.

"This is _a cheval_. To straddle. Like this." He moved over Prime, thighs along waist and abdomen. It was the position he had taken on that first night. How different the feeling now. Not fear but quick excitement. His body reacted to Starscream's weight, his hands on Starscream's hips.

"Oh, I like this one."

Starscream sounded petulant when he said, "You would."

Prime didn't need much coaching, was halfway inside Starscream when Starscream pulled free.

"Star..." He wrapped his arms around Starscream's waist. "Don't stop."

"No, wait." Starscream made an annoyed noise. "It is also called the slave position by anyone who mass shares for a living." A hard look. "You understand?"

"Now that hurts my feelings."

"Optimus, you'll climax from that whether you want to or not. Why do you think our first time was _a cheval_? Besides," he added ruefully. "I didn't know how big your mass was going to be. A larger mech could hurt a smaller one in any other position. It's a good starter. And to hurry things along."

He grinned and kissed Prime's sulky mouth. "Any variation of me on my back is the Companion."

"I know you like that one." Prime ran his hands down the still-sticky inside of Starscream's leg, and was faced with impenetrable armour.

"And this is the Warrior."

Starscream about-turned onto his knees, pushed his aft out. The position slid pelvic armour-plates over each other, made a small opening wider. The protoflesh was shimmering with electromagnetic welcome.

Excitement sparkled through Prime. He reached for Starscream's aft. "Oh, Star, let's do it that way."

Starscream was genuinely shocked. "No! Optimus, I only showed you so you'd know." He looked aside. "It's the Warrior position. It's how you fuck a defeated enemy when you've bested him. Before you kill him."

Prime stared at Starscream. He had never thought any revelation about sexual traditions would ever be a disappointment. "Honestly?"

"Even Megatron never took me that way, although I have to admit that I would have killed him before allowing it. And yes, that is what it means, and no. It is never allowed."

Feeling mass-crazy Prime pushed himself forward and nuzzled Starscream's neck. "Maybe outside of this berth." Imagined stroking Starscream to arousal and turning him over...

Starscream slapped Prime away and pushed himself to the end of the berth. "It's a dark-planetside tradition. They mass-share more than Autobots and neutrals. But not for pleasure. The position forces your pelvic armour open. It's a terrible indignity, to be taken on your belly, and spilt into, to die with another's mass inside you. Only in the foulest and deepest places of Cybertron do such acts take place."

"Oh."

"Now come here, I've more to show you."

Afterwards Starscream lay alongside Prime, and Prime wondered if Perceptor was up waiting for Starscream to come back. He could imagine Perceptor not being happy about Starscream leaving, warning him off.

_Why?_

What did Perceptor know that Prime did not?

"Optimus, can I ask something?"

"Sure."

"Why did you never do this with Jazz?

"This? You mean bodysex?"

"Perceptor said you used to be lovers."

"Spark-lovers, yes. But he was always in love with Prowl. It was an Academy relationship."

Prime went on to tell him of his solar year in the Autobot Academy, the only time he was beyond the reach of the Temple.

"They were trying to make me a martyr. But I learnt to fight, and learnt that love existed." A pause. "And can be taken away."

Unexpectedly, "What's _sparkbonding_?" His Autobot pronunciation was off. Prime felt something clench inside him.

"Why do you want to know that?"

"It's been one of those words thrown around recently. I hear the juniors talk. I don't understand Autobot, but I feel as if I should be aware of its meaning."

Discussing something of such permanence with Starscream seemed almost a waste of words, data thrown into an ion storm. What would such a thing mean to a mech who refused to share sparks? Perhaps Starscream would mock him for such sentimentality, and Prime didn't want that memory, ever.

"Sparkbonding - it's spark melding. Twinning. A mech will take on the spark energy of another. They become two bodies, one spark."

"Sounds painful."

"It doesn't happen straight away. But a Bonding Ceremony sets a pair on the path, makes them receptive. The bond happens over several spark-meetings afterwards."

"Then I'll adjust my previous comment to painful over a long time."

It's not. Or not from what I've heard."

"You Autobots are so sentimental. Us Decepticons don't strive for exclusivity. We belong to each other."

"Now that sounds lonely."

Starscream shrugged. "It is what it is. Not like I know any differently."

Prime clutched Starscream close. A towering disquiet came over him. They existed in a bubble of the present. Glorious and incomparable, but ephemeral as an Earth season. He had to be realistic. Starscream would not stay with him always. Perceptor might not win Starscream away, but somebody would, try.

Starscream could have his pick of anyone.

And one day he would return to Megatron - return in disgrace perhaps, but return all the same. Within a short time he'd regain his political position in the Decepticon hierarchy.

One day Prime would have to turn his cannons on him. One day he would have to run his flaming sword though Starscream's body. One day he would have to kill him.

Starscream was not permanent. His Primeship was.

Prime murmured in prescient distress and tightened his grip around Starscream, buried his forehead under his chin, and wished to stop time. Let it march on somewhere else. Starscream would grumble a few words in Decepticon, still in recharge, oblivious to Prime's turmoil.

_Don't allow yourself to fall in love with him._

Its too late. It's too late.

He's always existed as a mech alone. It was his plan, remember? To keep alive. He'll stay with you until it suits him, and then he'll leave. Even Megatron couldn't hold him. One day you'll be in that position. It is only a matter of time.

* * *

__

They didn't have a chance to meet until after Jazz and Prowls' ceremony. The Ceremony itself had been joyful, a pleasant diversion. Not what his own sparkbonding would be, if he allowed it to go ahead.

And then the delegates arrived, the candidates for a Prime sparkbonding. They'd picked up the scent of power the same way a turbo-fox might pick up the scent of spilt massblood.

At Prowl's request Prime entertained the delegates with icy politeness, was cool with the mechs passed before him. Most candidates blended into each other.

Only the last one stood out, a mech from the twilight city of Vos. She was smaller, had the clean lines of a Basic. An unusual choice. The other delegations had primogenesis on their minds, and placed for candidacy those individuals who might pass on characteristics and types. Prime had secretly derided them. The Prime line was at an end.

As Prime sat with her, she didn't chatter like the others did, trying to charm or bully him into affection.

She said, "I don't believe you should choose anyone."

"Do your handlers know you're saying this?"

"We have discussed what I am going to say to you."

Her accent was similar to Starscream's. Of course - Vos had also been Starscream's old home. Scientist's Cant was her tongue. He could see the cool intelligence in her optics. That - and something else.

"You're an Oracle."

"I am a scientist."

"I've known Oracles. I have lived with them before they were banned from Iacon, and you are an Oracle, and you've been sent here to me. So speak."

So this is where Starscream had learnt his cultural inscrutability. She regarded him with flat authority before saying, "Don't get bonded."

Her time was nearly up. All Basics had a measure of foresight, but he didn't know this one. The perimeter countries of Cybertron had little hope of securing a shot at candidacy. They were not powerful, like Alphas, or desperate, like the shadow-siders. Perhaps all they could do was derail the process.

"If you're as good an Oracle as they say you are, you'll know I don't intend to bond, ah..."

"Arcee," she repeated.

"Your time is up. I'm sorry."

She left, and another candidate came in, and the process went on all over again.

* * *

Prime had been starving. He could feel the wound-up tension in himself, his impatience with others. Had rejected one candidate without even looking at him, causing a minor political crisis. He felt like a paraded freak, like the ones they used to have before gladiator bouts, those ruined, throttled mechs led around at the end of shackles by cruel owners.

When a candidate failed to show up, Prime cut loose and sought out Starscream, finding him in one of the storage lockers. The seeker was sorting out scrap metal, tasting the alloys for their constituents. He looked up, saw Prime's face, knew.

"Optimus...?"

"Don't talk," Prime groaned, pressing Starscream against him in a crushing embrace. There was no place to lie him down, no place to hide, there was even a Senator staying in his guest room, displaced Autobots camping on the Nose, strangers everywhere. "All I've had is talk, and I'll I've done is think of you."

No asking. Up against a wall, little room to move. He'd taken Starscream without pause, wanting that blunt physicality. The locker was so small, Starscream's feet found purchase on the far side, and his wings scraped to his left and right. Thinking of sparkbonding made him think of what was planned for him, a return to the emptiness of his life. He held on to Starscream's aft, heaved up into Starscream's body and expelled quick sobs of relief when he climaxed seconds later. His legs and feet were rimed in his own spill.

Starscream looked at him, did not speak.

Wordless, Prime pulled open his chest, gasping, and the Prime Spark was there within the black, verminous rigidity of the Matrix's corpse. Starscream looked away.

"Open your spark. Let me in. Please. _Please._"

Starscream squirmed free. "Not here."

"Okay," he'd said, "okay," when it was not okay at all, and was rewarded by Starscream's kisses, scientist's hands on his frame, stroking another arousal from him.

"When do you have to go back?"

"Now."

"Now?"

What little influence Starscream had here, he exerted it with authority. They mass-shared again, Prime didn't bother to keep quiet, vocalised each time he pushed into Starscream.

Starscream seemed oddly unsettled, less responsive towards overload. As Prime drove himself, Starscream had said between gasps, "Is mass-sharing dirty to Autobots?"

"Yes," groaned Prime, straining for climax. "Yes, very. Very, very..."

Only later did Prime realise that Starscream had not overloaded. Remembered a fumbled question, and a gasped reply, but not the context. Remembered that Starscream had asked in a nasty tone, "How long are these sparkbonding ceremonies supposed to go on for?" as Prime cleaned himself off.

"As long as it takes. They often differ."

Perhaps Starscream was already starting to feel smothered by Autobot culture, their drive towards sharing and honesty.

"Have you ever wanted to be sparkbonded?"

"Primus, no. But I'll be forced into it eventually."

"Jazz and Prowl seemed happy."

"They had the luxury of choice. It's different for a Prime."

"You can't choose who you wish to Sparkbond with?"

"I could." He put a hurried arm around Starscream's waist, kissed him goodbye. "But then I'd have to give you and bodysex up, and I don't want to do that just yet."

In hindsight, it was the last time they talked. Starscream began to spend more time with Perceptor, and the governments began to open up their knowledge of the Cybertronians to scientists outside of their Above Top Secret Security levels. Prime was taken away by the business of leadership for longer and longer stretches. Prime never listened to the rumours. At least, he told himself that he wasn't listening, but he squirreled the information away nonetheless.

Then Mirage and Wheeljack came to him, one night. They came with a stolen conversation in English and Decepticon, a whispered plan.

_I don't love Optimus Prime._

* * *

TBC


	11. Hunger

Eleven: Hunger

* * *

Now that they were between wars, living in a sullen and uneasy peace, the concerns turned inwards.

Small arguments that had been kept on hold during great battles now erupted like aluminium dust left to build up until it self-ignited, and more than once Prowl had to report a pair of 'bots brawling in a corridor, or a human science facility, or even on Cybertron itself, in full view of an Alpha or an Elder.

Despite Prowl's hard-line approach on such infractions, Prime himself was reluctant to punish them with more than a few days of extra duties and less recharge time.

"These are warriors, they've been built to fight and react. They don't like sitting around."

"They should at least show some respect to the Autobot colours," Ironhide would argue. "If we let things start slipping now, we might not get the discipline back. Not if we need it. The Decepticons may have left this planet, but I don't think they've returned to the banlieue yet."

Prime made all the motions of agreeing, but in his spark, Prime knew of how the warrior-bots felt, powerless and wound up spring-tight so that every little inconvenience was blown out of all proportion. No matter how quiet the Ark mechs tried to keep it, the word had escaped - there was to be an Autobot/Decepticon sparkbonding, and Prime was to officiate it.

There had been, in some points of their history, a cult of the No-Spark, a dark place where not even electricity could generate, analogous to human Hell. And Prime often wondered if that was what it would be like, to watch Starscream bond to another mech after all that he had endured, after all he'd gone through. Would he reach a new unfelt level of emotional anguish? Or would it feel like every day now felt, long stretches of numbness, his spark dead, more mechanical than sentient? He had joined the Matrix. He had gone beyond hope and despair now. Moments alone with Starscream, even in the sterile chill of the medical rooms, were things to be snatched up and hidden away.

The scars of Megatron's torture, once nothing more than rotted protoflesh and rusted exoskeleton, began to tidy up. Even as Starscream hissed through his clenched jaw indecipherable words in Decepticon, even as he raised his hands to his ruined face and murmured the sounds between a sob and a song, the broken edges of his exoskeleton sloughed away, leaving smooth transitions and long silver darts down his once-elegant back.

Wrong of him to do any more than apply the substrate, but Prime punished himself. Was gentle, and firm. Let his thumbs test the give of the protoflesh before applying more mass, drew out the treatments so that they lasted nearly a whole cycle, until Starscream was shining with lubricant pushed out from joints and exoskeleton pores. Brought Starscream to near climax, let him fall away into a trembling plateau before bringing him to near overload again, came to know his responses with a proficiency he'd never quite bothered to grasp before.

When he was done, he delivered him to Perceptor juiced up and hot for bodysex, stinking of raw energon and lubricant, the smell of _fucking_ as the humans would say. Perceptor would always come for him, and they would leave together, Starscream unsteady on his feet, so sensitive to touch that Perceptor's fingers on his forearms would make him visibly tremble. Numb, Prime would sit for a while longer, Starscream's ersatz flesh cooling on his hands. He no longer wished for Starscream. He no longer imagined Starscream and Perceptor. He only endured each day as it came.

As usual Ratchet would come out of his medical rooms and look at Prime before shaking his head.

"Don't say it," said Prime after one treatment, a difficult treatment when Starscream had inadvertently let the newly-formed pelvic armour slide back, giving Prime a split second glimpse of new protoflesh, folds of iridescence and silver so shockingly erotic he'd almost overloaded by looking at it.

Only by some incredible strength of will did he snatch Starscream up and carry him away to the nearest empty room, pour himself into him, forgiveness given or not. He was sick with restraint. Starscream had breathed out, folded himself up, his exoskeleton so new-healed he probably hadn't even felt what he had done.

After, Prime needed to wait, to regain some control before leaving the room and rejoining his sterile life as an Autobot Leader. For now, his proto-organic self reigned, said, _did you see him? That is yours to take. Your property. You own him._

Ratchet only watched him struggle with himself.

"Don't say _I told you so,_ because I know, Ratchet. This is difficult."

"I wasn't going to," said Ratchet. "I've been there before."

"You never said where _there_ was, exactly..." Prime looked up at the medbot's tired, wise face. The chevrons at his forehead always made it seem as he was frowning.

Ratchet shrugged. Same sad face. "We were trained in this process of mass addition when I was barely a sparkling, when my designation for medbot had been chosen for me, before my exoskeleton had even hardened. Back then the war was at its most bitter. The battles were fierce. The injuries, terrible. There were no parts replacement. We slapped mass into a 'bot and made him transform into anything he had surface area to manage before sending him back out into battle. I knew individuals who re-scanned exoskeleton ten times a solar cycle."

Prime brushed the mass residue off his hands. "You did this procedure to many?"

"Not many...but it was expected that I would be able to judge overload on each member of my team, if I had to."

Prime noted the timbre in Ratchet's voice change. "They expected you to know in advance."

"Yes."

"By bodysex?"

His fingers traced a pattern over a tabletop. "Yeah."

Prime slapped the silvermass from his hands, watched as the matter exhausted its half-life, degraded to sparks and dust. "Here I am, eating myself up over what I did and thinking nobody understood, but you did, always."

"I tried to warn you, remember? I tried to tell you that this is what you would face if you started sharing bodysex with _him_."

"I don't regret it. Not one moment."

Ratchet shook his head again. "I regretted my time. I regretted becoming attached, and that pain when he said it was over. And I regretted seeing him get bonded to another Autobot. It broke me Prime, and it'll break you too. It's just that now I can't say anything to stop it."

With that he retreated into the ultra-violet shadows of his diagnostic rooms, white exoskeleton purpling, his optic glows turning carbon black like the blind prophets of the oldest stories.

* * *

A brief recourse from the endless cycle came when Emirate Xaaron called for a quorum. It was time, their supreme commander said, for all the various leaders of the Cybertronian factions and hierarchies, from the Autobot-aligned to the non-combat Empties, to meet and discuss strategies, and perhaps win more converts to their cause.

Prime was summoned, and as an Autobot Leader could chose a retinue of followers - he chose Prowl and Jazz, and at Prowl's urging, Mirage to join him at the space bridge.

There was no disguising that the bridge itself had been built with Decepticon hands out of stolen parts. The retaining walls were still marked up with various corporate logos, everything thrown together without thought to compatibility. Though it was their main method of travel between planets, Mirage still looked at the structure as if it might unexpectedly implode.

"Doesn't look safe."

"It'll be safe enough," said Prowl. "They were never able to sabotage it the bridge before they fled, and we've used it a dozen times."

Mirage grumbled in infrasound, but followed them into the bridge anyway.

The journey itself was as uneventful as all bridge travel was - bright light, darkness, bright light, a million light years passed in a second, the aching loneliness of the journey. The Autobots had experimented with taking humans, years ago, when they were still tentatively testing out the boundaries of their inter-species friendship. It had been a disaster in more ways than one. Humans were pure organic, nothing more than emotions and instinct. Space Bridge travel left them insane.

The bridge's sister-portal opened into Iacon, and Mirage warbled with delight when he saw the golden domed city, the atmosphere of rarefied nitrox, the spires and temples of their glorious capital. If one looked close you could see the damage that had been done from the wars, but the city re-grew itself like exoskeletal crust, the scar-tissue even more splendid.

They were escorted by a small golden mech in the red livery of the Autobot faction towards the Celestial Temple. Prime transformed down into vehicle mode, an Earth disguise that was still unfamiliar here, and managed to make it into the Temple without being instantly recognized by the curious mechs who lined the streets, wanting to catch a glimpse of all their leaders gathered in the one place.

Once through the Temple's portcullis, and safe within the uranium-inlaid floor of the entrance hall, the Autobots folded out of their alt-modes. Jazz looked around appreciatively at the rare artworks adoring the walls and pillars. "I forget how amazing this place is. Look, Gilgamech circuits! I never thought I'd see such patterns outside a data feed!"

"Once a palace," intoned Mirage, with all his highborn knowledge of Iacon history. "Of Alpha Duex, the Overlord of Cybertron. He ruled all this planet, and nearly every known planet during his reign."

"So that would explain why half the intelligent species we encounter have a fear of giant robots," said Prowl, dryly. "He wasn't a particularly honourable character at all."

Mirage let out a snort of derision. "All Alphas are descended from him through Alpha Prime."

"Good for you," said Prowl. "That doesn't make him any less a despot."

"Quiet now," interrupted Prime. "Xaaron approaches."

The hoary golden mech limped towards them. He was the same shade as the Temple gold, and needed no disguise save to stand next to any one of the busy art-laden surfaces to blend in. Once he had matched Megatron in size, but age had crept upon the Elder, and it was a shorter mech who took Prime's hands.

"I am glad to see that you have recovered well from your captivity. We all feared the worst, but your bondmate never gave up hope."

Mirage coughed. Prowl gave Mirage a sideways look. Old Xaaron occasionally had memory lapses, and it was not polite to correct him.

"But Prime, I have another problem," he said. "Walk with me."

* * *

This was how Prime came to be at the deep-tunnel hovel of a neutral-aligned Cybertronian Underlord. Normally, someone like Prime would never have had to share pleasantries or even diplomatic relations with such a minor robber-baron as Epso Tesselax, a 'bot renowned for his embargoes on power and energon supplies to the poorest parts of Dead End, but Xaaron had been desperate.

"He's sitting on a main conduit into Old Polyhex. Normally he's too frightened of the Decepticons to do much more than draw small amounts of pilfered energon off it and sell it on the illegal market. Now he's stopped the flow completely."

Prime was startled. "There's a market for illegal energon?"

Xaaron made a _it is no surprise_ gesture. "Energon production has been going into decline for some time now."

"Why divert needed energon into Polyhex? Cut him off."

"Since the Decepticons gone into hiding, we want to restore Polyhex to Cybertron as a functioning city. That requires an open conduit."

"And I might help, how? You know I haven't got the programming for minor council matters."

"Tesselax rules the Dead End _Arrondissement_. We haven't been able to establish diplomatic ties with him for aeons. Then recently we get word that he might be inclined to speak with you."

"Why me, of all people?" asked Prime. "He knows my power in Iacon is ceremonial. It would be better to send yourself. Even Senator Meridian would do. They are two of a kind."

Emirate Xaaron had not been able to answer him then, but later, in the Underlord's chamber, Tesselax had been much more forthcoming. "Those sun-addled Senators despise me," said the mass-bloated mech. "They treat me like I am of no more worth than one of my whores. Even when they come, offering me legitimacy, I can tell they despise me."

Prime shifted uncomfortably on the memory-foam seat. He wished he could have at least brought someone with him. Tesselax's chambers were dim and crowded with spoils from his illegal activities. The main light source came from an ancient recharge vat in the far corner, incandescent gel turning grey from dirt.

Tesselax himself was the colour of old rust, his body shattered from a long-ago injury, rebuilt in smaller pieces, and now looked freeze-framed in the middle of an explosion, all spikes and shards. He had used mass addition to try and heal himself, but his exoskeleton was so fractured it could hold no shape. He had only succeeded in decreasing his surface area to mass ratio, resembled a sphere covered in knives. Almost as tall as Prime, he was emperor over a shabby, ill-gotten realm.

As Tesselax spoke, he smoked energon from a brazier bristling with pipes. The smoke hazed over what little else was visible, made Prime's vision futz in and out of focus.

"But you, I hear, are not averse to availing yourself of offered delicacies. You may understand some of what drives me."

Another smaller mech lounged nearby, smoking from another pipe, burnt energon making its optics distort to pinpricks. It giggled nervously at Tesselax's inference. Prime noticed the remnants of Decepticon plates on the mech's chest, that the shadows on its back were atrophied wings. A stasis girdle ringed the narrow waist. Prisoner. Slave. The Neutrals could be barbaric too.

Tesselax held out a length of pipe towards Prime, shook it in offering.

"Untreated energon, straight out of the source conduit. It cannot be eaten, but we ingest it by inhaling the sweet fumes. Try it, great Prime."

Prime didn't much care to try anything offered to him, but Xaaron had been desperate. _"Help us, Prime. Befriend him. Make him take the Autobot oath before you."_

"All right," said Prime, taking the pipe, "but then we must talk about you taking the oath of Autobot fealty. Cybertronians need to band together. Any moment now the Decepticons will return, and we have to be ready."

Tesselax nodded, sagely. Cautious, Prime folded back his faceplate and drew on his pipe.

Almost instantly the untreated energon hit his processors and sizzled through his neural nets, sparking black fire from logic gates and making his circuits stutter and jump. His body shuddered and he fell back on the memory-foam, the room whirling with a vertigo his stabilizers were powerless to stop. He vaguely sensed Tesselax coming to him, whispering, "Optimus Prime, relax, it is only the first rush. Take more, and you will come to your senses."

He felt the invasion of the pipe in through his numb lips, and he had no recourse but to breathe in the acrid smoke again. His mind flowered open, his proto-organic self yowled in mute pleasure. He lost the last shreds of contact with the Matrix, and it sat in his chest like an amorphous weight.

"Oh..."

Tesselax laughed, and Prime was, in the part of him not reeling, relieved to find only benevolence in that laugh. It was not the laugh of someone who meant to do harm, yet he lay back, utterly vulnerable.

A clap of Tesselax's hands, and Prime became aware of others in the chamber, and surprisingly well-played throat songs puzzling in an auditory dance about him.

Prime groaned.

Tesselax lay next to him, face close. "Now I feel I may talk to you, fellow Cybertronian, mech to mech." He reached out a spiked hand and caressed Prime's face. "How utterly unexpected. You are so beautiful under that mask. Why do you hide yourself? If you were one of mine I would sell you only to the highest bidder." A wicked, broken smile. "Or keep you to myself."

"The oath," mumbled Prime, not quite willing to let the idea go, even though there was the possibility of him being in real trouble.

"Yes." Tesselax sat back with a sigh. "There is little choice, whether I come to you Autobots willingly or not, but I will indeed have to be drawn in. Come here Solarstar, my little one, my pet."

A pleasure-slave sat next to Tesselax, pinprick optics looking at Prime with suspicion. The slave knew who he was. Prime was startled into memory, recognizing the same build as Starscream, the same inscrutability, same sleek form. Even that bearing, of unbreakable pride under the greatest humiliation belonged to the pair of them. Tesselax stroked the pale thighs, made the slave open them wider.

"They found this one trying to pass messages to a spy in the dead end. One of my competitors' property was mass-sharing with an Autobot Elder. Ah, that Elder would treat me like a nothing upon the surface, but once down here he would swill at any trough. Those stolen secrets were worth much to the Decepticons, were they not?"

Razor fingers on the pleasure-slave's cheek. No emotion on that noble face, save for a boil of repressed hatred underneath, hate for its captor, hate towards Prime. Now Prime saw the shadows on its winglets, the Decepticon sigil.

"It is somewhat of a delicacy to take a Decepticon. This little one used to put up a fight at first. Now he is compliant. Still, they are not like Autobots, with their love of shared experience. It takes skill and experience to wring pleasure from such sullen creatures, so we do not use them as courtesans; but to sink your mass into one, to not expect that they will receive pleasure in return...ah, there is no greater assertion of physical dominance."

Dizzy, Prime tried to follow what the Underlord was saying. All he could see was him, a black, spiky blur, and the mech at his side. Solarstar? Starscream?

More hands touched him. The pipe to his lips again. Where was he? What was this place? Tesselax's fingers worked at Solarstar's pelvic armour, and the slave parted his legs. Silver protoflesh. Prime's bodymass pulsed thickly under his armour.

"But you already know this, do you not? My informers tell me that you took on a Decepticon slave yourself, despite all advice otherwise. This made me believe you were one who could empathise with me."

_I'm nothing like you!_ Prime wanted to say, but his speech was gone from him.

"But he defied you, did he not? Sought independence, wanted to bond to another?"

Tesselax's fingers prodded, and the Decepticon gave a curse-chirp of anger, emotion quickly curbed by the stasis girdle.

With the other hand he pulled the surly face towards him. "Give my guest what he wants, pet. I can see he hungers for something." To Prime a hideous smile, "I could read it in your body the moment you stepped in here. You are a mech starving. You long for something that was taken from you only as you had the briefest taste. Someone has awakened you to exquisite madness, and someone has taken away the thing that could ease your pain, yes?"

The smoky haze was tinged with blue. Prime whirled in and out of the smoke, his bearings gone, as if he'd been cut loose in a place without gravity.

"In my chambers you can find what you want, for I am a merchant of deepest needs."

Thick words as if through syrup. Lassitude weighed his limbs as he watched the Decepticon slave approach him, then stop. Hesitation in those drugged eyes, for it had seen Prime's size, knew that they would not be mass-compatible, feared pain.

For a moment Prime detested the whore for looking at him like that. The glance was disguised as nonchalance, but still, it had been there.

Through his stupor, Tesselax's purr, "What do you wish for? What is your spark's greatest need?"

His greatest need? The energon smoke made him turn in and in on himself. Prime reached out, wanting to touch. _He_ shied off, unattainable as always, one step ahead, out of his reach. Grabbed arms, pulled it closer. With a free hand touched the body that was always held from him. The body that teased and tormented him, spent long nights with Perceptor, refused to acknowledge him. His now.

"Star," he moaned. "Don't go." Prime pushed the mech onto its back, and it tried to fight him, and it would have pulled its arms out from its metaskeletal sockets for all the good its struggles did. Prime loomed over him, ran a heavy hand down the cockpit chest to the pelvis, to the aft, to the long thighs that once encircled him as he had thrust into unbearable sensation.

"Remember the old ways," said Tesselax in a low fidelity hum, "remember how a leader could have all he desired, could use the spoils of war for his own pleasure. _He_ would have not been permitted to disobey you."

The slave attempted to straddle him, but Prime did not want it that way, pushed the pleasure-slave down, tried to turn it over, wanted to do what he'd only experienced in his shameful fantasies.

"Don't fight me Star, don't..."

When it realized Prime was wrestling for the Warrior Position the slave quickly spread its legs, murmured lies, gave a grotesque pretence of welcoming him. The whore stunk of fear and abhorrence. Prime pushed his mass into a metaskeletal opening too small for him (_but not much different than Starscream's, Prime, and you took him with much less awareness than you do now._)

"Punish him," whispered Tesselax, lips close to Prime's head, "punish your slave for taking his sweet body from you, for defying you."

_Punish him._ Prime jerked into the mech's pelvis with brute savagery. His bodymass so swollen with encroaching overload it hurt him. "Starscream," he grunted, "Starscream, Starscream."

Starscream under him. Starscream bending to his will. Starscream crying out, but his, his property, his to use, his to take pleasure from...

The little Decepticon was frightened now, and the optics irised open. It said things in Decepticon hate-speech. It squirmed, pushed palms against Prime's abdomen, tried to push him out. Prime seized its wrists and held them over its head and he spasmed and jerked bodymass and bellowed Starscream's name once more, pushed into that wincing space, organic-self not caring for anything more than relief.

Even then he was not finished. He turned the slave over despite its protests, arched up into flesh-space from behind the way he'd never been permitted, _Starscream_ gripping the memory-foam as Prime seized slender hips, forced himself into that too-tight space. The feeling was so astonishingly intense he overloaded immediately. A starburst of agony from having held himself without climax for so long, and then Prime groaned _Starscream, oh Primus, Starscream I love you._

In the cooling smoke, Starscream was gone, and there was only a stranger beneath him, muttering curses. Prime came to his senses as if he'd been hit.

He pulled himself out of the slave, and it didn't move, stunned by the force of Prime's assault.

When it recovered, it spoke sharply in Decepticon at Tesselax, accusing him of all kinds of travesties, calling him words that had no Autobot equivalent.

Tesselax shrugged as best he could. "But he is a Prime, my sweet. Certainly better than the Senators you service."

The Decepticon gave a haughty sniff, stalked off.

Tesselax laughed softly. "This has been amusing. I am a 'bot of my word. I will take the oath."

Prime fell back against the foam, gasping.

"What did I just do?"

"Exorcised some demons, perhaps. Ah, don't feel like you are the only one. They have all come to my chambers and rooms, Senators and Elders alike, all wanting and needing. It just brings a joy to my spark to know that even a 'bot so respected as yourself has the same wants and needs as the lowliest of us."

So Tesselax took the oath of fealty while Prime lay on his back, cooling down from overload, his processors overclocked with guilt and hunger, and something awakened in him that had slept for far too long.

* * *

TBC


	12. Confession

TWELVE: Confession

* * *

"How long is this going to take Ratchet? They've done nearly ten sessions already,

and I haven't seen any improvement, and to tell you the truth, it's starting to affect our relationship."

Perceptor was arguing with Ratchet when Prime entered the med rooms.

He returned a few Earth-days early after only having been gone a calendar week, claiming a minor glitch with Teletraan's security servers. Perceptor and Ratchet hadn't expected him to walk in, unannounced, when he should have been on Cybertron.

"...the result varies," Ratchet was saying. "You've a great amount of mass to replace, and morphic resonance can be fickle. He mightn't grow wings at all, just get heavy-oh, sorry, Prime I didn't see you there."

Unspoken communication skipped between Perceptor and Ratchet, before the science 'bot left, bristling with a damped down concern.

Prime waited until his footsteps were no more that resonance in still air before saying, "What was that all about?"

"Ah, trouble in Paradise," said Ratchet, deadpan. "They argued while you were away, so go easy on Star when you see him."

"We don't really talk much." _At all._

"Still, you can cut the air with an electron blade between you." He stroked a chevron. "I heard all about the misunderstandings. One disaster after another. I'm just glad it was between you and Starscream and not between you and a high-level sentient species, if you know what I mean."

Ratchet spent some seconds calibrating one of his diagnostic machines when Prime, unable to hold in his curiosity, asked, "What were they arguing about?"

Ratchet looked over a mini hadron-coil at Prime. "I'm sure it's something involving the sparkbonding. Who is inviting which friend, which songs are sung. Star is a Decepticon after all." Ratchet paused, looking at Prime's hurt face before adding, "I'm kidding. I don't know what they fought about. What happens on the Nose, stays on the Nose."

He put down a tool, and looked at Prime. "Which is not what I can say about your time in the Dead End."

His spark jumped. "You know?"

"Only what everyone else knows, that you had to take a detour there under Xaaron's diplomatic orders. 'Bots usually put one and one together and make a binary three, so it doesn't take much to guess you had to burn off some of that energy that's been building up since we brought you back from the Decepticons. Half the time I thought you were going to tear a door off its hinges if you didn't-" he leant across conspiratorially, "-fix yourself up. But then what did I tell you would happen?"

"I know. I know, and yes it happened. But the thing that I can't process was how..." Prime paused, still hating himself and trying to confess delicately, "how almost non-consensual it was."

"Almost?"

"Very." He covered his face with his hands, needing darkness, needing to hide.

Tesselax had given him the oath of fealty with such solemn tones Prime was sure he was being mocked. Maybe he _was_ being mocked, him lying there in a puddle of silver, too confused to do much more than watch the room spin. The slave had left, perhaps to rest, but more likely to ply its trade in the quaternary conduits. If Prime had done anything else in the fetid confines of the Underlord's chambers, it was gone from his memory. He off-lined for several cycles, and when he woke, Tesselax was gone.

Only a few unnamed empties still recharged up against the pilfered chattel and rubbish, and Prime, unsteady on his feet, found his way out of the chambers.

The cold, cathode-ray light of Dead End's unwavering twilight was no different from how he remembered it back from his days in the Academy, when he'd succumbed to the urging of his fellow classmates.

The night before graduation they'd taken him, saying, _Optimus, you've never seen such a place like this_. The rank conduits and malaise of these deep sections of Cybertron were such a contrast to the radium splendour of the Academy, and Prime, raised from spark-budding to be a leader, had never known of the existence of such a thing.

As he stumbled on, Empties lounged on intersections, stared at him out of jumbles of optics and smeared lenses and wetware organic eyes. Some of them whispered come-hithers to him, desperately, knowing that they would be beaten by a master who lurked out of sight down a corner, or in a high place, if they did not manage to obtain such a customer.

The place disoriented him. This filthy, rust-infected sore inside Cybertron. He had fallen under its spell, and for a night joined them, but why this unsettled feeling inside him? Every time he see the flash of red and white exoskeleton, he'd stutter-step, then have to will one foot in front of the other.

Maybe he'd have to tell Ratchet when he came back that he couldn't go on with Starscream's treatments. Tell him that something lurked inside him, huge and hungry. If he didn't get a lid on it, something terrible might come out.

Emirate Xaaron was ecstatic however, when Prime returned from the Dead End. "I got your comm. It's a glorious day. You've opened Polyhex for us."

"Tesselax, he's not the sort of individual we should be associating with," Prime said, swallowing his own guilt and disgust. "He _keeps_ others, he..."

Xaaron held up hand before Prime could go further. Here in the upper reaches of the Celestial Temple, the golden beauty of Iacon spread out in all directions around him, but Prime could not rid himself of the stink and the recollection of the Dead End. Xaaron looked at Prime with dimmed optics, calculating. "You saw the worst of what our kind can fall to. No doubt you saw the worst of what an individual can do, and I'm as certain as our planet houses the sacred spark of Primus that that Underlord made you plunge into depths of yourself you didn't wish to see."

Prime clenched his jaw.

"What was it?" asked Xaaron. "To kill and destroy all those who oppose your leadership? To conquer a million planets under your name? Torture of the worst kind, crushing a spark in your fist and staring into dying optics?" Xaaron held up his hand again, stopping Prime as he tried to answer him. "Wait. You need not say anything. I know it is none of those things. Optimus, I don't for one minute believe that you _didn't_ do something that was inexcusable and an obscenity and never to be spoken of, but that is Tesselax's greatest and worst talent, the skill of his foul trade, that he can see into the darkest facet of our sparks and reveal it to the light, however corrupted it might be."

"I wish I'd never gone. I wish I didn't know what I know now."

Xaaron shrugged, his exoskeletal plates creaking.

"Mightn't we say that about this Primus-forsaken war? That we've had to do some very bad things to achieve our small measures of freedom? With Polyhex secured, we can reroute the old energon stores to citizens that are starving, we can rebuild mechs who have been crippled by energon rationing. It is easy enough to die for a cause, as easy as dying, but to _live_ for a cause takes strength beyond measure."

Prime nodded. He didn't feel any better, and fretted over the Decepticon slave that Tesselax owned, and all those creatures he had seen in the conduits, their desperation, their beaten-down existence. All very well to think of freedom up here when there were those that through circumstance could never be free.

Back in the guest quarters of the Temple, Jazz and Prowl only gave him sideways looks. They were wary around him. There was little question that they knew where he'd been, what he had to do. Mirage, who had spent the downtime socializing with his Alpha-bots, was evidently behind them on the news. He stayed by Prime's side, was chatty and more relaxed than he'd been for a long time. Optimus-this and Optimus-that. Were he less distracted Prime might have tried to read something in his sudden familiarity, but all he wanted then was for the quorum to be over and to return to the Ark.

Now he relayed his story to Ratchet, relived it all over again.

"This awful creature who lived in Dead End, this Underlord owned a mech, slagging _owned_ him, and I took advantage of it." His optics felt white hot under his palms. "I took him because I wanted to."

"Optimus," Ratchet said gently, "you can eat yourself up about it, but from what I've heard about the Dead End Underlord, you'd have to be a cube of solid metal to resist him."

Prime took his hands away. The room seemed unnaturally bright from the hadrons spinning in their coil. No place for secrets.

"You were right, Ratchet. What I'm doing with Starscream, it's breaking me. I'm vulnerable to slagging people like Tesselax, and if I don't stop and regain some sense of myself, I'm going to stop being an effective leader."

Humming contemplatively, Ratchet reduced the coil's strength until shadows played under his eyes. "Now that divides me between you and my oath as a medbot. Prime, it's wrong of us to stop straight away. I made a commitment to treat him, and so did you."

Prime was stricken. "_Primus_."

Ratchet reached across and patted Prime's forearm. "It won't be for long, Optimus. Just give him a couple more sessions to make sure the treatment's definitely not working, and then we'll break the news to him."

* * *

There was a storm howling outside the Ark, a vicious cyclonic grind of sand and dust, and no end in sight. Across the world the ocean currents stuttered and spun in different directions, continental plates knocked into each other, volcanoes spewed hot lava, subduction-zones buckled and tsunami washed distant shores, geomagnetic poles tilted. All these things happened, and unless they were there the humans felt none of it, as through their whole evolution they had existed with this constant background noise of their riotous living planet. But for mechs used to their homogenous metal world the noise fed into their anxiety, disrupted recharge patterns, fed them a constant background cacophony.

Even in the medical rooms Prime could hear the dust grinding at the exposed bulkhead on the ship, the distant wail of the conflagration. The lights flickered ominously.

"Where did you go?"

Prime froze, one hand still on a silverscar. Starscream never spoke to him, at least not directly, nothing other than a _stop_ or _continue_.

"What do you mean?"

"You were away for a week."

"Didn't Perceptor tell you?"

"I was informed of certain things. Other things were kept from me."

Disturbed, he began to layer on some more mass. Some odd emotion was affecting Starscream. He wasn't reacting to the treatment as normal, none of the whispers and sighs as if Prime wasn't there, but instead was angry and stoic as he had been on that first day.

"Then you are informed."

"Why this Autobot loathing for mass sharing?" asked Starscream suddenly. "Why has it become such a terrible thing to you that it needs to be hidden away?"

Prime clicked his lips behind his faceplate. "It's discouraged. To the point where it has become taboo."

"Why?"

Prime shrugged, uncomfortable. "We're not like Decepticons. We're more reserved in how we share ourselves with each other."

"Of course it's different if they're just prisoners of war, correct?"

He knew that Starscream was only saying what he needed to say. It did not hurt any less, but he wanted to give Star that space. He would have said, _"It's different if you're in love with someone, and you're feeling things you've never felt before._ but that seemed foolish and a lie. Was it love? Was this even love? Or was it just body-sex insanity, going into musth like an Earth-mammal?

"The truth is," started Prime, "sparksex has no secrets. You can't hide your true self. There's no concern, no missed communication. Your separate worlds are translated into a common language."

"Perceptor says Autobots have never developed the emotional barriers to handle bodysex."

"He's correct. The act makes us vulnerable."

"I thought sparksex would make you more so," said Starscream. "Knowing how your partner felt about you. What if they were ashamed of you? What if they thought you were ugly, couldn't bear to touch you?"

Strange internal warmth, like a small circuit unexpectedly activating. A revelation began to dawn on Prime. He was discovering a side to Starscream that he'd never considered.

"You would rather experience duplicity?"

"I would rather not know."

"It is a great anguish," said Prime in careful English. "To want someone who cannot want you back. One would hope to avoid that particular nuisance through sharing sparks. We hope to reveal truth, but sometimes it just happens that too much is revealed." He paused. "Sharing sparks could have avoided us a lot of hurt, though."

Starscream's ventilation became charged. The light-glows flickered. The storm howled like a living thing.

"Are we done?"

"Yes," said Prime.

Starscream stood up to leave. But instead of walking out the door without a word, he turned to face Prime.

"I never thanked you for rescuing me."

"Oh, right," said Prime, startled by this sudden admission. "I...I wasn't going to leave without you."

"You should have. They say you almost died."

"_You_ almost died."

"That makes us a pair, doesn't it?"

Inscrutable as always, Starscream turned and left, and Prime sat there blinking and confused, wondering what in No-Spark had just happened.

* * *

Livewire and Jackpot huddled around the energon dispenser with growing impatience. No amount of percussive maintenance - thumping the recalcitrant machine with fists - or plaintive calls to Gears or Wheeljack over the internal-communications got the unit to spit out even one measly cube of low-quality energon.

There seemed to be a problem with the energon supply. Nothing seemed to work properly, 'bots who normally did one job were doing another.

Jackpot was used to things going his way. He started to whine. "I don't think I have the strength to walk all the way over to the other end of the Ark. You'll have to fetch the Energon and bring it back."

"Why me?" said Livewire, green exoskeleton bristling with indignation.

"You can transform, can't you? I haven't got scan clearance yet. I'm anthro always."

"I'm not going back there and waiting in line for a whole cycle just for you to lounge around like an Underlord."

Jackpot clicked, impatient. "Why did we come here anyway?"

"The other one is always crowded."

"The other one always works!"

"Aren't you supposed to be lucky all the time, Jackpot? This was working an hour before you showed up. I think your lucky patina's wearing off."

"I've put the call through to the techs," grumped Jackpot. "We'll have to wait."

The semi-derelict recharge station, instead of being crowded with two or three dozen bots in a line at all one time, was home to a very few science 'bots. Only two others sat here ingesting what had obviously been the last of the energon rations. Jackpot looked at a sorry looking old Autobot with grey livery, and a blind mech with semi-healed scars down his back. Destined for the scrap-heap, the pair of them.

With all the confidence of their youth and station as newly appointed Autobot warriors, the two settled down to talk.

"How long have you been on the Ark?" asked Livewire.

"Not long. A month. You?"

"Three Earth months."

"You must have seen the Prime Sparkbonding, then."

Livewire shook his head. "Sentry duty. Anyway, they never bonded."

"But all the Alphas say..."

"They're wrong. Prime ran off to rescue some Decepticon he'd gone mass-crazy over."

"Prime? Optimus Prime? No!"

"It is true, Jackpot. Happened just before you transferred here. Would have been a bigger scandal if everyone wasn't so quiet about it."

"I'm not that surprised. I worked the gambling houses on Iacon. I've seen Senators sport with shadow-side pleasure-mechs. They aren't so different to Decepticons.

"Still, they say Prime will never Sparkbond with Mirage now, too messed up." Livewire glanced at the blind mech, who had knocked over his energon cup. He frowned. Either fix him or scrap him, he thought. It was a waste of energon keeping mechs like that alive.

"I've only seen Mirage once," said Jackpot. "I heard he was very beautiful."

"He's an Alpha. They are all beautiful."

"And the Decepticon? What did he look like?"

"Never saw him. I wouldn't have known if Skids hadn't told me."

Jackpot shrugged, rested his elbow on the wall and chin in his palm. "It could be considered romantic. What happened to the Decepticon?"

Livewire raised his hands. "Who knows. However," Livewire made a show of dropping to a whisper, but spoke just as loudly, "I think I know where he is."

"Where?"

"Dead End."

Jackpot narrowed his optics, not convinced. "Are you sure? You know this how?"

"Ah, you know how Perceptor and Wheeljack were talking? About Prime visiting Dead End and ah...doing what one normally does there?"

"Yeah?"

"My sources tell me that wasn't any ordinary whore. It was _him_. That Decepticon Prime's been so crazy over."

Jackpot wasn't so certain.

"Your sources aren't very good, Livewire. I saw you talking in the main hall. Never trust a mech that needs four others to transform, I say."

"Trust me, Jackpot, if he's not here on the Ark, he must be there in Dead End. Prime was wailing over him, going _Starscream, Starscream don't leave me_."

"Then remind me not to fall head over spark for a Decepticon," deadpanned Jackpot. "Anyway, this place is depressing. I wish we could be fighting right now. Let's get out of here."

Jackpot nudged his friend along, and the pair of them left into the main corridors, to return to the Ark's busy heart.

* * *

TBC


	13. Cutting

THIRTEEN: Cutting

* * *

At Prime's urging, Ratchet managed to corner Starscream and give him a proper medical rundown. "Well might it be some peculiar Decepticon tradition to wear your punishments out in the open for all to see," said Ratchet in all his medbot bluntness, "but it's certainly not part of ours. And it reflects badly on me."

Normally Starscream would have scooted away, Perceptor playing interference, enabling him to continue his "hair-shirt existence" as one of the human anthropologists had put it, when she had asked about the dented-looking robot who seemed so incongruous among the well-maintained others. But Starscream had, in the days since he had opened up to Prime, suddenly become self-conscious. "How bad am I," he had whispered to Prime when they next met, "do I really look as bad as they say?"

"Who says this?"

"I hear them talk," murmured Starscream, sad and sullen at once. "The other Autobots. Pretend I'm not there. Say things."

Easy enough to pass Starscream's mood off as Decepticon vanity, another indication of their concern over the physical rather than the spark-spiritual. But Prime now understood how deeply their sense of outward selves affected them, how important it was. They were so much like humans in that regard.

Prime had said, "I'm sure Perceptor doesn't mind at all."

Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. Who knew what Perceptor thought? Starscream had withdrawn into himself. Prime had needed to be extra attentive during therapy when he got that way - no physical cues to approaching overload, only suicidal stillness.

"_Only a couple more,"_ Ratchet had said, and Prime couldn't find it in himself to tell Starscream he needed to stop, couldn't make that final call when Starscream would say things like, "do you feel something there, anything?" and Prime had to shrug and tell him no, because it was the truth. Nothing grew from the scars. The therapy wasn't doing anything more than creating a false bond between them, only giving Starscream false hope and wearing Prime raw. Even the time in Tesselax's chambers had not satisfied him, not even damped down his constant ache, only awakened him from depressed stasis and whetted the knife edge of his hunger.

So after their next session of mass-therapy, when Starscream was compliant with exhaustion and his defences down, Ratchet went into action.

"Your heel's just exoskeletal damage. It would self repair now if you could transform and rearrange yourself in subspace, but you'll need to scan something else other than aircraft."

"No," said Starscream. "Where's Perceptor?"

"He's usually here to collect you by now," said Prime, hoping that Wheeljack would keep the smaller 'bot distracted for another hour.

Ratchet pulled out his tools. "Then give me your foot, and I don't want to hear any complaining."

A few mild curses in an ambiguous Decepticon dialect, Starscream put out his leg and let Ratchet weld emergency splints onto the heel curtains. He spent several minutes realigning the ankle, stabilizing the rest of his foot.

When that was done, Starscream allowed Ratchet to move on to his pelvis. "Structural integrity good. You were lucky the damage was only superficial - your armour has grown back nicely."

"What does it look like?" Starscream asked, guarded. "Does it look bad?"

Ratchet threw Starscream a glance that the blind mech would not have been able to see. _So this is what's important to you?_

"Apart from some colour variation, nobody would know. Fold back that exoskeleton. Don't be shy, I've seen everyone's protoflesh at one time or another..._He_ still hurt you pretty badly there."

Prime looked aside, waiting to be ordered out, but oddly enough Starscream angled his knees aside and said in a casualness so forced, "How long after each treatment am I allowed to overload?"

"Not until you've finished with them altogether." Then wryly, "Perceptor reaching the end of his patience?"

Starscream pressed his knees together, indignant. "What sort of question is that?"

"The sort of question when I'm looking at someone with a habit of bodysex, who is supposed to be getting bonded, and has been driving his partner up the wall." Ratchet prized Star's knees open and reached into the hidden place. Starscream let out an indignant chirp. "Even if you weren't mass-accumulating, I'd hold off on _that_ activity for a couple more weeks, but I'm pleased with the healing. Now, on the matter of your optics..."

"I don't need optics to fly."

"I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about that damn echolocation, as well as seeing your scary face up and down the hallways. Come here." Ratchet held Starscream's face between his hands and tutted.

"What?"

"That sight might take some more work. I'll need to discuss it with my colleagues."

"They can't be fixed. I know it. I've done medbot duties before, and optics are exoskeletal-permanent."

Starscream spoke with Perceptor's Alpha-accent when he used scientific terms, Prime knew that he had discussed this already.

"Perhaps, though I've not fully explored the theories on optical reconstruction."

Ratchet mapped out Starscream's shoulders and measured the exoskeletal dents, then moved to his spark-casing. "You've grown back a protective layer. Again, a scan and transform in subspace and you should be able to achieve any analogous material form you want. Let's see that spark of yours."

Now Starscream was shy, and he turned to Prime, or at least where he thought Prime was, and said in a small voice, "Don't look, please."

Though Starscream would never have known if he turned or not, Prime turned around and watched as crimson refractions danced on a far wall, rainbow hues with warmth so different from cool Autobot blue. He heard the clink of tools and a few grunts from Ratchet as he threw his strength into realigning the spark chamber. Prime touched one of the refracted lights as they hovered on a nearby table, but as soon as he put his finger on it, the light had gone, and Ratchet had closed up the chamber and Perceptor and Wheeljack arrived.

"So they did manage to get you examined," said Perceptor to Starscream. He examined the heel work critically. "You did well, Ratchet."

"And his spark's sitting in the chamber properly now. It won't hurt when you two, well, you know. Do the deed in two weeks."

A lull of silence. The energon Prime had eaten that morning sat like molten uranium in his counter-current exchangers...he wanted to throw up. Wheeljack heaved a sigh and said, "Prime, can I have a word?"

He gladly followed his technical adviser out, feeling awkward in the same room as Perceptor and Starscream. Didn't want to see their moments of affection. Didn't want to see Perceptor touching him, though of all of the 'bots on the Ark, only Perceptor had been Starscream's true friend and ally.

"What's wrong?" asked Prime, sensitive to the darkening of Wheeljack's speech-lights.

"Just saw the look in your optics," said Wheeljack. "I knew a 'bot who had gamma-ray lasers in each socket - he could cut a 'bot in half just by looking at him."

"That might have been useful."

"It was lonely for him I think. Not being able to look at anyone for fearing he'd hurt them." They walked on for a few more paces before Wheeljack said, "You have to tell Starscream you need to stop the treatments. They're not working, it's making you strange and it's not doing his and Perceptor's relationship any good."

"Why is that?"

Wheeljack rolled his blue optics at Prime. "They can't do things that cement a relationship. I can tell you're dying to know, so I'll tell you - Starscream doesn't have any desire for physical bonding, not sparksex or bodysex, and Percy's sure it's the mass that's doing it."

"It could have been his time with Megatron. The things I heard him do..." Prime's voice cracked and he clenched his fists.

"Perceptor understands. But he had needs, as we all do, and while the treatments are going on...well, Starscream doesn't have anyone else here."

Prime moved his head, eased out one of the constant pains that plagued him. "We've talked about stopping, myself and Ratchet. I'll tell him at our next session. Our last session," he added.

"Good, yes," said Wheeljack, breathing a sigh of relief, and Prime had the distinct impression that Perceptor had been behind those pleas. "That flying thing, you know, it's overrated. Better to re-scan something on the ground, something less ambitious."

* * *

Later that day Bumblebee arrived back at the Ark with Spike and Carly, both of them red-faced and dusty from a long drive through the desert without air-conditioning. ("It didn't seem necessary when I scanned that car," said Bumblebee by way of explanation). Carly looked happy despite her nebula-cloud hair and the pink sweat-streaks down her face gone brown from dust and sun. Spike looked just pleasantly bewildered, especially when Jazz peered at Carly's finger, and the small gold band with its very small chunk of crystalline carbon.

"It's an engagement ring, Jazz. We're getting married."

"Married?"

"Sparkbonded," said Bumblebee. "They don't have sparks, but still..."

The small crowd escaped the squalling desert wind by retreating into the Ark's immense shelter. Prime was the last to go in - force of habit from far too many retreat-manoeuvres. He could hear Spike's voice ahead of the others saying, "Where's Perceptor, I have to tell him I got a high Distinction on my paper..."

He almost didn't hear the light step on the ramp, the surly, "Have they gone yet?"

Prime turned about-that voice?

From the fold of one of the bulkhead battens Starscream eased out from his hiding-space.

"Humans," he said, "It's always a riot when they turn up."

"What are you doing out here?"

Starscream pointed up to where the Ark's nose overhung them, massive and mountainous. "Kicked a dish off. My back hurts. Wasn't looking where I was going." He pinged an echolocating chirp and shook his head. "I can't get a picture out here. All the rocks sound the same."

"I'll help you look," said Prime, and he helped, though most of the looking was interrupted with his looking at Starscream, the sunlight catching the almost opalescent colour of his exoskeleton.

"Perceptor's not going to be happy," said Starscream morosely, when several minutes of scanning and chirping didn't reveal the offending dish. "He took forever to calibrate the thing."

"Where is he? Shouldn't he be helping you around?" Prime chided. "You could get lost out here."

_Or throw yourself off the nearest cliff._

"Hound," said Starscream. "They went on an overnight geology expedition."

"Left you behind?"

"Something, like tha - OW!"

"Starscream?"

The mech bent over sideways, face a rictus. "Straxus," he whimpered, I think something's wrong, my back, my back and...AH!"

Prime caught Starscream before he fell. He felt heavier in his arms than he had in the reactor pool, but he could have weighed as much as the Ark and Prime would still have caught him.

"What's wrong, Star, what's happening to you?"

"Hurts," hissed Starscream through clenched jaws, "hurts..."

Starscream began to shiver, his joints popping and creaking. His hands folded into claws. Sharp gasps came from him. Panicking, Prime picked him up as if he were a sparkchild and began to run for the Ark. He nearly bowled over Jazz, who had gone back to see where he was, and narrowly missed stepping on a few human scientists who had come out to see what the commotion was.

Whatever Ratchet had been working on at his examination table, it didn't matter, because Prime swept it all off to lay Starscream on the surface. The mech arched his shoulders and cried out, a sound so close to the one he had uttered during his torture Prime gasped with sympathetic agony.

"Help him, Ratchet, something's _wrong_."

Ratchet went into action at once. He reached around to the silver-scars on Starscream's back and nodded.

"Help me turn him over. This is going to be rough."

Starscream was too insensate to help, but the pair of them managed to flip Starscream gently onto his chest.

"Careful, careful," said Ratchet, "his exoskeleton is still fragile there."

Prime grabbed Starscream's grasping hand and Starscream held on, probably not knowing who it was that held him. This was not like a mass therapy session, with its gentle climb towards overload, this was pain, and Prime couldn't bear it.

"What's happening to him?"

Despite the situation, Ratchet was as calm as ever. He gave Prime a reassuring, patient smile, then leant close to Star's head. "Not long Starscream. Give it a couple more seconds. Just relax into it."

If Starscream heard, he gave no indication, but Prime watched in horrified wonder as the scars visibly rippled and _exuded_ as if a sword-palm had been poked rudely from inside Starscream's thorax and out through the scar, not quite bursting through. Prime felt the hand in his squeeze, mute agony flowing across osmotic boundaries, before he relaxed, and Starscream visibly sagged into the table.

"Oh," sighed Starscream panting.

There on the scar surface were two triangular nodules, no bigger than Prime's hands.

"Wings," said Starscream, too weak to do much more than smile and whisper.

"Starscream, they're beautiful."

He smiled, his wide, beautiful smile and Prime wanted to kiss that smile and make it real, and not doing it seemed almost a crime.

* * *

It really was a double day of celebration, even if one incident was secret and private, and the other was a human Sparkbond promise and not really anything to do with mechs at all, but the cyberemones percolated through the ship and made everyone sparkly and joyous. Prime could sense it on the cybernetic undercurrent, that some strange pall had all of a sudden lifted. He heard snippets of laughter and song over the internal-comms, the excited chatter of friends.

Starscream recovered from his wing-cutting within the hour, and spent a few aborted attempts at trying to look over his shoulder before Ratchet found a pair of high-polished chrome plates, enough to angle a glimpse of the first hints of a planar surface.

"They're so small," said Starscream.

Ratchet measured each nub, made pleased tic-tocks. "That's great some symmetry going on there. One more treatment and they'll start growing by themselves. In another month you'll have enough surface area to attempt a scan."

That afternoon, Ratchet prepared the last of the mass, and left Prime and Starscream alone. Star was jumpy and excited, the promise of flight making him sparkcrazy. He vocalized his pleasure loudly, squirmed and jumped with each mass-laden handful.

Prime wondered if Starscream was doing it deliberately. He had to know how unbearably frustrating it was to watch him approach overload, the V-splay of legs that had once straddled him, the hips he once clutched and the delicious agony of overload, the vocal frequencies Prime had learnt to associate with bodysex. When he was in the mood, Starscream was not ashamed to cry out when he reached the almost-climax of his, and he was in such a mood today.

"Oh," he breathed, a half-laugh when Prime lay the substrate aside to give him a moment to recover. "That was close."

"There's still some more. Let's give it a rest for a minute, then we'll add the last."

"Hard to believe this is the end of it."

"You worked for those wings."

One more handful of substrate, his last touch and Prime took it for all it was worth, caressing the wing nubs with gentle reverence, amazed that such delicacy would soon grow into such full sweeping power. Starscream arched his back, slipped his hands along the inside of his slender thighs. Perhaps he didn't mean to say it, so that it slipped out inadvertently in their lingua franca English rather than the Decepticon that he so often muttered, but he sighed, "Oh Straxus I need to overload so badly right now, I don't think I can wait."

Too much. Barely able to conceal a groan, Prime slid his hands over Starscream's hips, clutched him with desperate strength, didn't let him leave his seat.

"We can finish this off. We can go back to my quarters and finish it off."

He didn't want to sound like an urgent, adolescent sparkling, but that was exactly what it felt like.

Starscream froze, before saying, "How do you intend to do that?"

A blunt question. There was no come-on there, just coolness.

The quiet rejection made his hands fall away. Instead of Starscream coming between them, they only gripped each other. An echoing emptiness welled up in Prime.

"Primus, I'm so sorry," he said, "that was rude of me and I apologize."

Starscream did not move or speak.

"Star, I said sorry. I don't want us not speaking. If I've done something wrong, you must tell me."

"It's not that," Starscream huffed, ill-tempered from unresolved overload. "You never answered my question."

"What...?"

Starscream turned, his sightless face shadowed and full of mistrust.

"You offer to help me overload. But why? The thought disgusts me."

His spark was squeezed with crushing disappointment, but Starscream had not finished. "You, a Prime, so perfect and supreme. Just to think of something so perfect touching something so ugly. It's an abomination. Are you trying to humiliate me again, make me think I could ever be desirable to you?"

Prime was shocked into momentary speechlessness.

"You'd be with Perceptor and not me?"

"You wish yourself in Perceptor's place?" scoffed Starscream. "Lying next to some ugly, crippled mech with his wings torn off? Too traumatized to do anything but lie there like some frigid piece of metal? Is that what the great Optimus Prime wants?"

Starscream was trembling with rage and other, incomprehensible emotions. He tried to leave away, but Prime caught him, pulled him close. The smell of mass substrate was arousing him utterly, his hands tingling with neutron decay and dark matter.

"I've always envied him."

Starscream moaned as if he were in pain.

"Stop it! Stop lying to me!"

"Star..."

"Don't call me that!"

With infinite tenderness, but with a strength that would never let him escape, Prime leant forward and placed a kiss on one new wing-nub, and the same to the other. Star shuddered at each touch. Prime worked his mouth down the length of each scar, and Starscream let out a long vibrato sound in Decepticon, weighed with despair.

"Tell me what you would have me do," breathed Prime. "Tell me how I'll make you overload and I'll do it for you."

Starscream leapt up, gasping, panic and humiliation and mistrust and a hundred other emotions flooding across a face that was normally so still. He uttered a few syllable-starts, clearly wanted to yell at Prime for suggesting such a thing, for bringing him to this emotional place so ravaged with traps and dangers that any wrong move could mean the end of them both.

Until finally, whatever internal war raged in Starscream reached a climax, and Starscream lost, and beaten he said, "I liked it when you put your mouth there. When you sung your song inside me." Starscream blurted it out so quickly the words came out in a jumble. "I miss that."

He fled, and Prime slumped in his seat. It was over, but not over, and in all his experience there was not a single algorithm to resolve the conflicts that raged within him. Nothing else but to keep on pushing through.

* * *

Spike appeared at his doorway later that evening with an invitation.

Prime had been trying - and failing - to squeeze in a couple of recharge hours. Even the nanites in his exoskeleton were jumping with a disjointed restlessness.

"It's only a get-together. Wheeljack's quarters. Because of me getting married and all, it's kind of a tradition that all the guys get together and, well, have a party, I guess."

Prime rumbled deep within his chest, trying to come up with a decent excuse to miss having to socialize with anyone. "They may not want a Prime there spoiling all the fun."

"Please, I want you there. You're my friend."

Human reductionism at its very best, their complex relationship summed up in one word. "So who's going?"

"Me and some friends from Stanford. Most of the sci and techbots, Ratchet, Perceptor, Starscream..."

"I'll be there."

He arrived late, after debating with himself the appropriateness of being close to Starscream when Perceptor was around. In the end he decided that whatever decision Starscream made was his to choose.

It didn't stop him from sliding in next to Starscream in the already crowded room, pressing his shoulder close.

"I didn't think you'd accept," whispered Starscream.

"I had to see you again."

Starscream didn't reply, but heat radiated off him like a furnace.

Spike introduced Prime to some human friends - who just stared at him mutely as they did all the other 'bots, too overwhelmed to drink their beer.

There was plenty of energon, sweet, good quality stuff that Wheeljack had synthesized from a solar flare. Prime was polite and sampled the iridescent liquid from an offered cube, saw some of the newer 'bots gawk at his exposed face before the shield came down.

Wary of getting intoxicated ever again, he gave his portion to Starscream, and his gesture did not go unnoticed.

But the night wore on and the fight stories became personal, and the songs of victory outweighed the songs of loss that seemed to haunt them always. Starscream and Perceptor started a vigorous debate on Cybertronian mech evolution, (All-Spark versus an organic ancestor), which made each the target of good-natured teasing, Wheeljack saying, "If you had any Autobot in you, you'd not even doubt the All-Spark."

"Who is saying I don't have Autobot in me?"

Then Starscream flashed a blind look over his damaged shoulder at Prime, and Prime's circuits stuttered. Was Starscream flirting with him?

Starscream's aft, the cant of his hips, his back all silvery with protoform scarring that could not completely hide the span of his shoulders, took on a different, more playful aspect. This was not his hunched-down self. This was the old him, the creature Prime had yearned for, had thought he'd lost.

His body began to respond blindly, like the organic ancestor of their argument. When he was sure nobody was looking reached out and ran a hand down Starscream's back, fingers stroking a wing nub and trailing over the silver-scar (same colour as the protoflesh you crave, that gasping relief that has eluded you since Starscream left, so badly you want him that the warning signals are flashing, you hurt, you hurt, you need, you hurt...)

Starscream breathed in and arched his back. Prime looked up and glowered at the other oblivious 'bots. Perceptor and Wheeljack were deep in conversation. He wanted to be alone with Starscream so badly right now. He wanted to pull him close, drop his face-shield and run trembling lips over the scars, the new wings.

He edged closer. _Primus, I'm going to force myself on him here and I'm not going to want to stop it._ His thumb caught the ending dart of the silver-scar and edged it down towards Starscream's aft. "Star," he whispered, fierce with longing. "If we don't get out of here I don't know what I'm going to do to you."

Ratchet had been squeezed in between Perceptor and Starscream, and he passed back a low, deliberate stare.

"Right," Ratchet said, sitting up. "I need to be a medic now. Livewire, time for another scan-" He nodded at a small green 'bot with a protoflesh wound at his side, "-and Star, you have to recharge, or you'll suffer a mass deficit."

Prime said quickly, "I'll walk you back."

Starscream said, "If you like."

And that was how he ended up walking alone with Starscream, dizzy with trepidation, and sometimes his exoskeleton would brush against Star's and he knew that if he made it to the outer ladder without having done something he would die from longing, his spark would extinguish in his chest. And each time he promised himself he would capture Starscream at that door, or pull him into that room, he would be struck with an awful, fearful indecision. In the end, it meant nothing, all his painful wishing, because they made it to the outer ladder and Starscream said, ever inscrutable, "This is it. Recharge well."

As if of its own volition his hand shot out and he seized one of the ladder rungs, blocking him.

"Don't go to him. Stay with me tonight."

"Prime-" started Starscream in a low whisper. "Perceptor will be back any moment."

"Stay with me," urgency put static into his voice. He loomed over Starscream, not boxing him in exactly, more like _being there_.

"Prime...Optimus..." Pleading, but he made no attempt to leave, was frozen like he'd been put in stasis lock, and Prime ran trembling fingers down Starscream's flank and Starscream did not pull away, and his vents were puffing like an old steam engine and Prime couldn't have stopped himself if he tried. His exoskeleton felt gold-leaf thin, a thin crust over the magma boil of his bodymass, and he could not contain himself. He enclosed Starscream in his arms, his fingers brushing against the sensitive wing-nubs.

"I was offered a slave on Cybertron. I was offered him and I took him," growled Prime. "I took him hard and I wanted it to be you. I raped him and I wanted it to be you. You've broken me Starscream, everything I am you've taken from me."

An Autobot would have been horrified. But Decepticons sung to different music. Starscream tilted his head up towards his voice like a plant grown in darkness and Prime fell upon his lips, starving for the taste of him, the dense cavity heady with raw energon and protoflesh combined. Prime's hands traced greedy paths over Starscream's exoskeleton, down sleek hips and aft, his knee sliding between Starscream's legs to the pelvic cradle, and Starscream was letting out little motor-groans.

"Say no," gasped Prime between ravenous kisses, "say no and I'll stop, I'll stop." He said this even though he knew that he would fall apart into a million pieces if he could not have Starscream now, wanted to take him on the cold floor of the corridor under the cold-fusion lights, did not care if anyone saw.

Starscream could only murmur, and it did not sound enough like a _no_ to be a no and Prime hugged him, saying, "Oh Star, you have conquered me, you have conquered me," and Starscream heaved a strange, defeated breath. Prime moved his covetous mouth down over Starscream's sensitive exoskeleton, the oyster-shell cicatrix fused over what once had been broken glass, and on his knees he pressed his face to Starscream's pelvis and began to sing.

Unable to fight him Starscream's exoskeleton folded back and the mech was huffing with hot breath and anxious pants, radiation steaming off him. Needing closer access, Prime slung one of Starscream's knees over his shoulder, nuzzled him so that Starscream was obliged to tip-toe on one foot or fall over, suspended as if he were about to dive off a precipice. When Prime's mouth grazed over the convolutions of protoflesh Starscream jerked and cried out, hands on Prime's collar-supports, midpoint between holding himself steady and pushing Prime away but doing neither.

Until finally the hands left Prime's shoulders and curled about his head, tracing the points of his finials, and Starscream cried out in surrender, "There please there, oh Straxus there..." and his hips jerked reflexively, Prime's mouth was filled with the taste of protoflesh on the point of overload, transmuted cybertronium, ozone and protons shaken from their nuclear moorings.

Then without warning Starscream froze.

Prime groaned into Starscream's flesh, and Starscream pushed him back, hard.

"No, wait..."

Prime stared up at Starscream in mute accusation.

"Someone's coming."

Prime stood up and pressed Starscream back to the wall, stupid with mass under pressure, groaned, "I don't care, let them see us."

Starscream gasped and writhed under the probing of Prime's fingers inside him, overwhelmed by the invasive cold metal against his warm protoflesh. Exited beyond measure Prime pulled open his spark cavity. The cyberemones flowing through him woke the Matrix, made it swell from behind its depression, but Prime did not care.

"I want you, Primus, Starscream, I've never stopped wanting you, not once." Blue light limned Starscream's dark face. "I'll show you, let me show you..." He stroked the surface of Starscream's delicate chest, desperate for a forbidden glimpse of spark. "Please let me in."

Starscream pushed Prime away a final time. "No. You said you'd stop if I said no."

Perceptor and Wheeljack appeared from around the conduit corner, and Prime glared at them for interrupting. If he could have melted the walls he would have, if he could have brought the mountain down on all of them.

The four of them stood around in awkward silence. Perceptor wasn't stupid. He knew exactly what had been going on.

"We'd better get straight into recharge," Perceptor said, uncomfortable. "It's been an altogether eventful and disorienting day."

Starscream didn't move, at first. Perceptor nudged Starscream through the hatch, and shot Prime a look of, _don't_, when Prime wanted to touch Starscream, just once more.

He felt flayed, as if his armour had been torn off him, his metaskeleton pulled out of their moorings.

Wheeljack let out a long sigh. "Prime, you might as well close your faceplate."

"Wha...? Oh." He raised his hand and felt sticky protoflesh residue.

"And your chest. Good grief, with you standing over Starscream like that with your spark showing and face all silver and looking like you wanted to kill the pair of us - it was obvious that we caught you at an inappropriate time."

"Couldn't you have come back with him later?" growled Prime. He was ready to punch dents into walls. He was ready to climb the ladder and take Starscream back.

"I would, if you had _asked_," said Wheeljack, "How was I supposed to know you two would be trying to have sparksex in a public corridor?"

Prime leant back against the wall and shook his head. "I can't let him go, Wheeljack."

Wheeljack joined him at the wall, arms folded. "You'll just have to deal with it, Prime. They're getting bonded. Unlike you and Mirage, they love each other, and all your wishing is not going to change that. Perceptor has been in love with Starscream since they met, and he'll never give him up. Never."

* * *

TBC


	14. Over The Threshold

fourteen: Over The Threshold

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It was Perceptor who came to him, as Prime knew he would, for they had reached a point of no return now. After their stolen moment in the corridor, Prime had withdrawn from any further contact from Starscream - the choice had to be made by Star himself, and made without pressure.

They were difficult days, elation and despair fighting within him. Memory-ghosts tingled under his palms, his lips. Sometimes he could switch off his optics, sense-trace Starscream's body by reminiscence alone. Teletraan whispered to him, _he is at the telescope array, he is talking to some humans, he is talking with Perceptor._

Sometimes Prime worried, what if Starscream took his remoteness the wrong way? What if they were just going to get trapped in yet another misunderstanding? A mech could go insane worrying about it. Like Jazz had said, when Prime had been about to be bonded to Mirage, Jazz who was steadfast and dependable, who thought the best of everyone, who had truly thought that Prime would bond for love when sometimes that was not an option to even consider, a reality as remote as the furthest stars.

Now Prime knew what Jazz had meant.

So he waited, and the days crept by and even Teletraan's security briefs seemed oddly empty. There was an atmosphere of waiting, a strange mood. Maybe not all to do with Star, but distracting all the same. Even Prowl, who was not given to emotional dialogue, commented on the stillness that had descended upon them.

"Even Decepticon activity seems to have ceased. We normally have a few sighting of a non-Autobot mechs a day, but in the last week...nothing."

It was a situation that could not go on forever, and in the end the opportunity came in the form of a human alliance. The Cybertronians had given a simple anti-neutrino detector to the Earth Scientists, a long-distance spyglass that had no military value. They'd kept the facility close to the Ark, gave the humans some protection.

As it happened sometimes in this part of the globe, the cold desert night crackled, dry cold air and a cloudless sky that went on forever. It was the sort of night that frosted up surfaces, sent rocks skidding about dry lake beds, leaving strange tracks in the dust as if they'd come alive in the night. Steam shimmered out from mechanical joints, sent condensation beading down smooth exoskeletal surfaces, making the mech shine in the testing ground floodlights. The human scientists not confined indoors chattered among themselves in tight huddles whilst the few military personnel rested on their vehicles and smoked filterless cigarettes with the casualness of people who know they are in no danger.

Behind them the Ark nosed its way out of a mesa, a blue-black shadow even in starlight.

Wheeljack and Perceptor stood together, the pale mech aligning a parabolic reflector, the red one using his shoulder lens to measure the refractive angle. One couldn't tell what the mood was - they were so engrossed in their work. It was Wheeljack who saw Prime first, nudged Perceptor. His temple-lights glowed softly as he spoke whispered words.

When Prime saw Perceptor's face he knew what the outcome was, and his joy was matched by a great solemnity. He may have won Starscream, but the cost - like all things of immeasurable value - had been great.

"We spoke at length," said Perceptor. "You understand? This was no easy decision for us to make."

_Us._ He could imagine them speaking as scientists would. No great emotional outbursts, the coolness and rationalization of their kind. Alpha-caste Perceptor might have been, but Starscream was still being courted by a Prime. In no permutations of their society could it be adequate for Perceptor and Starscream to stay together - theirs had been a doomed relationship from the start.

"If he'd been an Autobot," continued Perceptor, "or even a Neutral, I would have fought for him. Fought hard. But he's a Decepticon, and there are greater things at work here. We need you to be together."

"I didn't mean for these misunderstandings to happen," said Prime, "Any of them. I didn't mean for you to be dragged into all of this. But he was..._untranslatable_."

Perceptor nodded, resigned to Starscream's differences. "Yes. He speaks a completely different language, and belongs to a culture we consider base and brutal, but always has its own logic."

"You sound almost sympathetic to the Decepticon cause," Prime tried to make light of it, but thrilled with alarm all the same.

"He will be a terrible loss to them. Megatron might bring them their greatest victories, but he leads them to the edge of annihilation all the same. Without Starscream, they are dying race."

Mournful notes, and Prime knew the Decepticons were not the only ones who had lost someone important.

"He will always be your friend."

"Oh yes, he will be that."

Perceptor walked away and Prime saw that Starscream had done something rare and unusual - he had come out here among the humans and the other Autobots, was talking to Jazz, who in his way was flirting with Starscream (Prime thanked Primus that Prowl was manning the Ark tonight) playfully stroking the new wings that had grown half the length of his arm now, saying something winking and sly in English, words that made Starscream laugh knowingly, and made Prime's spark wrench. Not with jealousy, or perhaps not much, just concern and pride and desire all kindling off each other.

The humans _oohed_ and _ahhed_ over a meteor shower. Late August, a Northern Hemisphere summer, and the Perseid meteor storm like a rain of stars. Jazz whispered something in Star's audio receptors, then gave Prime a nod. Prime was certain of what Jazz had said - _he's watching you._

Star made no move towards Prime, just played it up, teasing him from a distance, distracting him.

The still, cold air and the flat land caught up the conversations of scientists, and he heard his name mentioned, a female voice saying, "Prime, Optimus Prime, he's their leader."

A male voice replied, "Wasn't he the one who got...what would you call it...married or something like that? A couple of months ago."

"Sparkbonding," she said, "they pair for life."

"But they're robots."

She laughed at his naivety. "They're sentient creatures evolved along mechanical lines, a true combination of Darwinism, Lamarckianism and Intelligent Design."

"Who did he partner with? I've never seen him with anyone?"

"The rumours say that it was annulled, that he was in love with someone else..."

"There you go again Lena, they're machines!"

"Oh Victor, you are so unromantic, what does your wife do with you?" Their conversation faded away.

So even the humans knew now, thought Prime. There would be secrets no longer.

In ever decreasing circumnavigations Prime sidled up to Starscream, his circuits jumping from electrical potential. Star was working on one of the detector magnets, his nimble fingers weaving in the last of the wiring from touch alone.

"Optimus," he said, quiet. "I could hear you from a hundred metres away. I was wondering when you were going to turn up."

"I...ah...spoke to Perceptor." Prime said, almost terrified. Anything could go wrong now. Any wrong word could be said, and their tenuous peace broken. He would take it slowly, not rush Starscream, be sure.

Yet every part of him was wired, like the strike before a battle. He clenched his fists, damped down the chaotic excitement. "Do you wish to talk about this?"

"Here?" Mischievous edge to the question. A few dozen paces away Jazz was watching, amused by the little scene that played out between them.

"There are just too many optics and eyes here. Perhaps back in the Ark."

Starscream nodded. "Let's go then."

The walked back to the ship together. Starscream was slow on his feet, ankle splint making his gait uneven. Prime half wanted to pick him up and carry him across the threshold. He had expected their pairing, when it came, would be proper and romantic. He would do and say all the right things, they would ease into bodysex gradually.

That idea was gone as soon as they passed into the dark overhang of the Ark's portcullis. Surrounded by forgiving darkness Prime pulled him into an embrace, began devouring him with fierce kisses, his fingers working at the armour between Starscream's legs until it opened and Prime whimpered with animal-organic desperation, his mass out of him and dripping silver.

Soft breaths of delight from Starscream, Prime's hasty desires a confirmation of a barely hoped-for hypothesis. But he still had his wits about him. "Wait, wait," gasped Starscream, "let's get to your room."

"Yes," said Prime, making no move to release him.

Quick nuzzle-pushes, and Starscream wriggled free, limped on ahead. Fortunately nobody was wandering the halls tonight, there were no optics to see them and ask questions. Prime was sure he would have just shouldered them aside in his determined march to be with Starscream, finally and absolutely. The sky could have fallen and he wouldn't have stopped to wait.

Once the locks clicked shut on the blast-doors, even the few paces to the berth seemed too far. Prime pushed Starscream up against the wall and with a massive heave he was inside Starscream's body and the intensity of being surrounded by him, him, him made him shout with hoarse victory, and Starscream was crying out, yes, yes, Optimus, my lord, and hooking one leg around the hip-spurs at Prime's waist and another slung over the crook of his elbow as Prime drove himself again and again into utter gratification, crying with relief and love and relief.

Starscream overloaded, quick and sudden, voltage crackling through his body. "Have you been thinking about me?" gasped Prime, charged up at the thought alone, "Have you?" and Star nodded wordlessly and Prime carried Starscream, still shaking with aftershocks, over to his berth, still buried inside him, dripping protomass across the floor, and proceeded to wreck the berth soundly. He trapped Star's hands in his own, fingers linking, made him fight, revelled in raw physicality. Heels scraped over Prime's back, gouged into hips and aft, Starscream shouted and cursed in Decepticon and pidgin Autobot, an abomination of languages and Prime overloaded with a bellow of triumph just as Star began to buck in response again.

Prime withdrew, curlicues of electrical arcs still ribboning his shoulders, wanted to just look at Starscream on the berth, hot and ready for him, a glorious sight.

"Optimus, put your mouth here..." Star's fingers dipped into his own protoflesh, Prime's spent silvermass thick strands of silver inside him. More silver had splashed across his abdomen and Star brought the mass to his lips, a gesture so painfully erotic Prime had to kiss him again and taste himself mingling with Star's unique flavour. His protomass rose out of him again, all heat and strange energy, and Prime murmured in surprise at the instable hunger that had coiled in him, all this time.

Starscream felt Prime's desire and Prime knew he was honoured by it, did not mind that Prime had to mass-share again, had to push into his tender opening like a mech who had starved all his life and now wanted to gorge on him. There was nothing graceful or elegant about their coupling, Prime's hurried grunts as he assaulted Starscream's body, and Starscream clung to him, his higher pitched breaths in counterpoint. Oddly enough, despite the violence of their mech-bodies heaving and clashing sparks against each other. Prime's overload was profound, filled him with a deep gratitude and affection towards Starscream.

"Primus, Star," moaned Prime, caressing the sweet swell of Starscream's chest-plates, feeling the hot and mysterious spark within, "you make me crazy, you'll make me die of overload..."

"We can't have that." Star touched Prime's lubricant-damp face, traced the optic ridges, the shape of his jaw.

He stroked Star's thighs wider, and bent to nuzzle the exposed protoflesh, the raw membranes where his protomass had chafed delicate surfaces, kissed them reverently. He was utterly submissive to Starscream now, he would have done anything for him, anything...

_Unit patrol four, report._

Mid song, he froze.

_Unit four respond on helium channel six._

Internal comms, close, but not his own.

"Don't stop..." groaned Starscream. "I'm so close..."

"Shh, someone's here."

"I know," said Starscream in between annoyed breaths. "I knew since we stepped into the room."

Prime was momentarily stunned, "You didn't tell me?"

"He can wait." Starscream was spiteful with delayed overload. "We haven't finished yet."

A shimmer of displaced atoms, and then Mirage was sitting in the corner, looking disgusted beyond words. Starscream glared at him balefully before licking protomass silver from his fingers, slowly and with theatrical deliberation.

"Whore!"

Prime felt torn between explaining calmly and indeed making Mirage wait. His bodymass groaned back inside him. Why did Mirage have to interrupt now?

"Mirage, you have no right coming into my quarters unannounced."

"I have every right," screamed Mirage, mouth warped with hate and despair, "every right! I read up on Cybertron law! We're bonded!"

Prime struggled not to be annoyed, but pressed his mouth together in antipathy. "We never finished the Ceremony. We never shared sparks."

The blue mech stalked forward, positioned himself between Prime and the berth, blocking him from Starscream. "You don't have to. Not during a Prime Bonding. It's only a ceremonial formality, even the asking of permission is a formality. The Prime's word is law, he asks for none."

Mirage turned to Starscream, "Oh, he doesn't love you. He wants to waste his foul proclivities upon you, by all means. I am benevolent, I know my bondmate needs to satisfy his desires on his slaves and property."

"Say what you want, Autobot," said Starscream with regal boredom, "it doesn't change anything." He moved a finger through a silver strand on his thigh and stared at Mirage until he turned away, appalled.

In desperation, Mirage returned to Prime and opened his arms in appeal. "Come back to me. You can forget about these depths you've sunk to. You can have him as is your right, but at least show the others that you are an Autobot above all."

Behind Mirage, Starscream edged a chest-plate open, let Prime catch a glimpse of pink spark and Prime had to concentrate on a tear in the crash-webbing on the wall, else be brought undone.

"Mirage," he was hoarse, "Get out."

"I will be proven right! When this is over you will know I am right!"

In the ringing silence that followed Mirage's fight was derailed. He left Prime's quarters as suddenly as he had come. Starscream lay back, unconcerned, languidly fastening his golden chest-plates back up. Oh yes, thought Prime, he was pure Decepticon - slippery and teasing, and there was no getting away from that.

"Starscream," he growled in English, "you are a very bad robot."

"Show me," Starscream spread his legs invitingly, and Prime was on his knees there, drawing sobs and sighs, "Oh dark Straxus _show me_..."

8

Afterwards Prime slipped into recharge, but only for a while. He woke to find Starscream sitting at the end of his berth in the semi-dark, Teletraan's constant light catching the highlights of his face.

"I thought you'd have gone back to your own berth."

"Would you rather I have gone?"

"No," said Prime.

"My wings," said Starscream. "Sometimes they hurt." The shadowed space where his optics used to be caught a glisten of binary information, for a split-second a phosphene flame of unseen light danced there, then was gone, leaving nothing more than blackened pits rimmed with scars.

"Do you want to visit Ratchet?"

A half-smile, as secret as his unusual spark. "It's normal. They're just growing faster than I can form exoskeleton, that's all."

Prime sat up, caressed the exoskeletal plates at Star's knee, the vent-louvers that formed his alt-mode disguise. He ran a thumb down the delicate vanes, making Star shift and tremble, sensitive to touch as always.

"I'm sorry that Mirage had to be here. I'm sorry about what he said to you," Prime whispered.

"He'll tell everyone? About us?"

"Probably. Yes."

Starscream's expression hardened. "I want them to know. I want all of them to know I'm more to you than what they all think I am."

Prime moved down to Star's foot, palmed the struts that held his injury in place. "You're more. He was being rude in the face of knowing that."

"He wants to Sparkbond with you. It consumes him, he doesn't know what he says."

"Is that what you think?"

"I was in that place, once." The light caught the silver-scars around his eyes, made them appear liquid for a moment. Distressed, Prime leant in, rested his cheek on the smooth surface of Starscream's chest-plates. Put his hand over the golden cockpit.

"If I could change everything that happened..." Prime whispered. "If I could go back and change it all..."

Starscream ran an idle finger over the points of Prime's temple finials.

"Then we might not be here." Star's empty optics stared into a place beyond his permanent darkness. Starscream reached out and touched Prime's face. Prime let his battle-mask fall, let Star feel how serious he was.

"I'd never seen a face like yours, when I first saw you. You were Reborn, weren't you?"

"Yes, retrofitted from a donor metaskeleton."

"What was his name? The mech who died so you might live?"

"Orion. Of that not much else."

"Orion. Hmm."

"What?"

"Nothing. It's a neutral name."

"Yes. They took him, from base Cybertronian stock, uncorrupted by spark-memories, aligned with no-one, repository for a Prime Matrix." Prime could not keep the regret out of his voice. All the purity of his donor had been tainted by years of struggles and sadness.

"That must have been something special. To experience that innocence. Not to be poisoned by knowing."

Prime took Star's hand, laid it over his chest.

"Sparkbond with me. Be my sparkmate." Prime's voice crackled with yearning.

Star heaved a breath and gently pulled his hand away.

"I couldn't. I would be a foolish ugly mech, singing a request song to a Prime. It would be beyond a joke. They will laugh about it until the end of time."

Prime held him tighter. "I'm the one asking _you_, I would sing the requesting song. All you need to do is say yes."

Starscream turned his sightless face towards him. "Optimus, it can't be done..."

"You thought it could, once."

"I've learnt some truths about the depths of Autobot loathing for my kind. I know when a battle is not turning in my direction."

Anxious from Star's sudden surrender Prime cupped one cheek. His injuries made him seem even more noble and beautiful to him, the scars on his optic hollows like silver pieta tears. Prime had to kiss him again, and then words escaped him, his carefully composed arguments. He pulled Starscream towards him, and his body responded automatically to Starscream's presence. Prime did not want to cheapen the moment by demanding bodysex of him again, but it was Star who needed affirmation now, taking Prime's mass into his body, just as he had on that first night, but there was a poignancy that had never been in their lovemaking before.

Star's head tipped back, jaw clenched, vents puffing, thighs straining at Prime's hips, and Prime knew where he'd seen that face before, oh yes, on the gold-etched surfaces of the Elder's Temple, holiest of holies, the ancient faces of the Warriormechs of Cybertron, perfect and unassailable. Hadn't he been compelled to see them during painful repairs that had nearly killed him, leaking protomass, screaming as medics battled to keep him alive, and all while the carved faces had looked down on his pitiful body from their golden verticals? Hadn't he gazed upon those faces through nights where he was so wired he could not recharge, stared in anguish at those picture-walls as he was beaten for failure, the electron lash scoring white-hot agony across his shoulder blades?

Starscream's face, battle-scarred, torture written across the obsidian surface, not desecration, but sanctification, and Prime arched his back as overload threatened, silvermass staining his belly, on the inside of Star's thighs, his hands on Starscream's aft, pulling himself deeper and he heard himself sobbing, "Starscream, I love you, Starscream, oh Primus you are beautiful, beautiful," and Starscream pulled open his chest-plates and revealed his spark-

-and Prime gasped and overloaded from the sight alone, protomass going liquid. Prime clutched Star to him, vocalized in the oldest of Autobot languages as a sensation utterly vast and incomprehensible flooded his mech-body.

Panting, Starscream disengaged and rolled next to him. His wings wouldn't let him onto his side, so he propped himself on his elbows, gave Prime a sly half-smile. "I like making you lose control. It makes me very satisfied."

"I'm sure you do," grumbled Prime. "Say that now when I can't reciprocate."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Ha."

"I told you that you would. The first time. Remember."

He had. But what should have Prime done, that night, what should he have done, if he had known?

Languid from overload, Prime tipped Starscream over, held his wrists down, began to stroke Starscream's exoskeleton with light touches. Starscream writhed under him, Prime brushed his hands over the new winglets, and Star let out small whistle-clicks of excitement. His protoflesh bared, he sighed, "touch me there," and Prime only teased him, a delicate finger on the edges of his armour where the neuro-feedback was greatest.

"Not until you say yes," said Prime, "say yes and I'll let you overload."

"Rust you," cursed Starscream, but his face gleamed with exultation. Prime released his grip, slid down to stroke and kiss Star's thighs, the achingly tender interstices and exoskeletal folds, and it took him all his willpower not to dip into the crimson-iridescent well of protoflesh, especially not while Starscream cried and begged him, "Please there, please," and when Prime did not release him, began to abuse him in Decepticon, sob-cycling between curses and entreaties. If Prime hadn't already climaxed, he would not have been able to contain himself.

It was then that Teletraan interrupted with her low fidelity murmur, "You're wanted in the War Room, Prime, it is somewhat of an emergency."

Star sat up. "Don't go."

He almost didn't. These constant interruptions were starting to toll on him. After today they would go away for a while, just the pair of them.

Prime leant forward. "Just think of what I'll do to you when I'm done." He slid his hand down one slender thigh.

Starscream pressed his knees together, angry and aroused at once. "Maybe I won't think at all."

Prime smiled, raised his mask. "Get some recharge. I won't be long."

Starscream echolocated fiercely as Prime wiped himself down, made a comment about leaving mass evidence, "as a badge of honour."

"They'll know when I announce our sparkbonding."

Starscream pretended to be nonchalant, but failed. His optic pits swivelled as rare feelings surfaced. Hope and worry and other indescribable Decepticon emotions. "Ah Straxus, I'd give anything to see you now."

Prime kissed him soundly, then left his quarters. He was going to be sparkbonded. This was how it should feel like, heady exultation and a deep certainty, as he'd never been more certain of anything in his life. He had done the right thing, for himself, for Starscream, for a world divided and at war for so long. He would sing the requesting song with true joy, he would open his spark chamber on their bonding night and share it with Star, love him for all that was dark and light about him. He was bursting with the need to tell someone, even if it had to be Prowl, even if his Second would probably have a power spike over it and melt a million circuits.

Perhaps he already knew, for when Prime walked into the War room Prowl was standing there with naked horror on his face, his door wings set back in fear, and something sank deep within him because what was about to happen was something he had no control over. He saw this, before the heat and pressure exploded over his shoulder-plates, and he thought, _I've been hit_.

_It hurts._

His legs gave out from under him and he fell like a demolished building on the titanium floor of the Ark, and in his paralysis could only see what was in front of him. He saw the skid of human blood across the dull grey surface, saw the pale, corroded foot that stepped before him, the pain-red protomass that oozed out between decayed exoskeletal plates. Then the face, still as a corpse, optics like crimson knives.

Beautiful English language voice which said, "I want my warrior back. The one you've stolen from me."

Prime's vocalizers had been frozen, but he could still reroute air into his mouth, let out a: "_Nnnnn_."

"Deny me all you want, my Brother, but he is mine and I will have him. It may mean I shall have to demonstrate to you how keenly I feel his loss."

Prowl spoke for Prime, Prowl who always said the right and the wrong things in equal measure, but he grated, "Why'd you try to kill him if he's so important to you, Megatron?"

Megatron turned on Prowl, hissed things in hate speech. Prime counted legs that outnumbered the familiar Autobot models, saw spikes and shards and killing tools as part of anthro-modes.

"I have received information," said Megatron, and his pleasant tone was acid on raw wounds, "about him that changes everything. He is a Decepticon, he is my property, and if he isn't returned to me..."

A pause, a long pause...

"..._he_ dies."

A wail on the internal-comms, Prowl's code, horror flash-burnt onto circuits, while externally nothing, no outward sign. But every Autobot knew where Megatron's cannon was pointing, to his other half, his bondmate, _Him_.

"Who is more important to you? Who?"

"It's okay," Jazz was imploring, "it's okay..."

Prime felt a foot on his shoulder plates, where the stunning blow still hurt him terribly. Not Megatron, by its size, perhaps one of the junior Decepticons claiming a trophy stance while Prime was still in stasis, a move he'd never have tried if Prime were anything less than immobile.

"You may outnumber us here," hissed Prowl, "but more of us wait outside this ship and on Cybertron. Your attempted takeover will not succeed..."

"Sweet Autobot," said Megatron, "I do not care to fight anyone or to win battles. I wish to rescue the one you have taken prisoner, just as you rescued your Prime."

The furthest corner of his available vision shimmered. A dozen weapons turned their sights on one spot that materialized, as if out of nowhere...because it was from nowhere, the null-space between atoms where the Autobot spy hid and lived, his other-body given over completely to invisibility. Blue exoskeleton reflected off the matte floor as only a smudge, but Prime knew who it was.

"Who are you?" Megatron barked.

Mirage's voice was ramped and scratchy with stress. "Is it true? If you have him, will you leave us, and not harm anyone?"

Prime screamed. Or at least he tried to, but his communication was in shut-down, all he could let out was that one consonant rumble, that drawn out _Nnnn..._ His body did not respond to him, just exoskeleton over foam, unbearable weight, and doubled by the awareness of having left Starscream to recharge, weaponless, utterly vulnerable.

"Of course. Much as I enjoy this brief victory over you, I know it will not last. So you give me my property and I will be gone from here.

"Mirage...you can't." Jazz stepped forward - and stopped when a weapon was turned on him.

_thank you thank you thank you..._

His brief hope fell on cold steel, died. Mirage was committed now. An opportunity had presented itself, to get rid of a rival and save the day, and he was not going to shirk from either.

"He's in Prime's quarters. He has no weapons. I'll take you there. You can have him, and you can go."

888


	15. Unexplored Territory

Fifteen: Unexplored Territory

* * *

Inside, Prime was still screaming when Megatron left the War Room. Malice in his footsteps, each one moving closer to his room.

_help him help him help him..._

But outside, nothing, inert as a storm.

Some of the Decepticon retinue followed, the rest remained behind, barbed feet, mirror-blades at ankle joints. A metal-on-metal tap, and Mirage's quick steps joined the fading ones. Prime moaned. He was useless, useless. Even the electrons in his protomass ceased their atomic spin, everything grinding down to hadrons and metal shavings. He couldn't even move his optics, couldn't send an imploring glance to one of the others.

Someone was yelling, "What has he done? Primus, what has Mirage done?" Their voice was so warped with distress Prime couldn't even tell who it was, and a Decepticon screaming back. "Shut up you filthy Autobot," and Jazz - it was Jazz - wailing back, "Rust you, slag you!"

"Jazz, calm down, come on." Prowl never sounded so raw. In the space of a few minutes he had almost lost a sparkmate and then had him returned, and now the chance of loss loomed large.

_Megatron will kill him!_ Jazz hissed in high Autobot.

_Those are heavy doors, said Prowl, it will be difficult to break through._

_He won't have to break through,_ Jazz was close to hysterical. _Mirage is an Alpha. He has Prime's entry codes._

Silence. Prime hissed air, too wrung out even to make a noise.

* * *

He was weary, but he didn't want to recharge; not now, when so much information needed to be processed, this gyre of data whirling, and he wished again for sight, something to distract him. Blind, his senses and his memories converged and he sometimes could not tell one from the other.

His memory sense spoke back to him...Sparkbond with me. Deep voice in the darkness, deep voice that told him he loved him, that he was beautiful, that might have been lying for all he knew, but Starscream didn't care. The past and the present had blended like an electron's probability cloud, and one could choose to inhabit the high or low places whenever one wanted. That voice had said things to him terrible and cruel, things that destroyed him absolutely; but it was the same voice that sang such beautiful words, that had brought him delight that could not be described in the precise and spare words of his people's tongue.

That thought made him smile to himself, slip his hands down to where he was still sore from their lovemaking, but an oddly pleasing tenderness at the same time, like receiving the brand of a soldier, pain and pride combined. Everything that he had been sure of in his life had been torn apart and rebuilt during his relationship with Optimus Prime. Actions that should have shamed him utterly, like assuming the Slave position over Prime's bodymass, a cheval, the degrading on-top straddle, had turned about into something quite different.

The arrangement, whose only advantage was to prevent the slave from being injured when servicing a larger Master, now was the one where Starscream had the most control over his partner. He never overloaded in that position - the unpleasant associations were too great - but when he'd still had his sight it had thrilled him to look at Prime's face on the cusp of overload, the Matrix Bearer himself gazing up at Starscream in worship. Prime never failed to overload in that position, never failed to cry Starscream's name as if he were calling to his god, and Starscream's Decepticon virtues, his love for power and influence and the obeisance of others, were satisfied completely.

Even in darkness he could sense the veneration, the awe. With Prime he was transformed into something worthy and beautiful, even though he knew he was those things no longer.

At last the blast door hydraulics sighed open, a sound homophonous to the Decepticon phrase whatever. Starscream smirked to himself, this ship with its talking doors.

_Whatever, _said the door.

Starscream stretched, indolent. "It's about time you came back."

And the reply came back, like all bad recharge-dreams and napalm-burns combined.

"Of course, but I'm here now."

_Whatever..._

* * *

The Deception soldiers that had accompanied them to Prime's quarters seemed young to Mirage. Or at least they didn't appear to be the kind of individuals one would deem proper to accompany a leader, not with their soft grey exoskeletal plates, and no evidence of first Transformation. Hadn't Megatron been able to secure the services of his more experienced soldiers?

But then again, maybe Megatron was the type to say_, Behold, I have no need for protection, for I am terrible and vicious and a curse upon all. These spark-children I have for ceremony's sake; but when it comes to battle, it will be I who will destroy you._

With a null-gun pointed at his back as he'd led the Decepticons down the long corridor, Mirage couldn't help but stare at Megatron walking on ahead, his head-plates low and flaring, his powerful body pitted and discoloured with scars, the dark vermillion ooze at his joints suggesting a massive amount of mass in a space far too small for him; and yet he was big, big. He stood at least head taller than Prime, and among Autobot kind any mech bigger than a Prime tended to be subsequently stupid.

Had Starscream shared his filthy habits with Megatron? Had that decayed flesh fornicated with his stinking second in charge? Clearly Megatron had swilled himself upon the Decepticon whore and required him back. It sickened Mirage to think of the great Optimus Prime polluting himself and his sacred mass in Starscream's contaminated body. He had barely been able to watch as Prime had rutted and debased himself upon this nothing of a creature, worth even less than a Neutral. A Decepticon. It was beyond shame to even think of oneself being lead by a leader who would allow that of himself.

Only the inner screen was closed, the opaque surface allowing visual privacy and not much else. There was an odd silence - Mirage had been looking forward to a show of begging and pleading before Starscream was dragged out of their ship and out of their lives forever. He waited for evidence of reprimand from Megatron, but there was nothing. Only an odd mewling phrase in a language he'd never heard before, and then silence broken only by the sound of exoskeletal plates being pounded by something heavy.

It went on for some time. Megatron stopped briefly, spoke words. Decepticon speech, ugly tones that stripped meaning down to implicatory bones.

The young Decepticons exchanged glances, shifted uncomfortably.

Mirage cleared his vocalizer, called in, "Um, Megatron, there will be others returning from the testing grounds, and they will be armed, so if you're going to take him, do it now."

Primus forbid that they come back and Starscream be rescued. There would be no getting rid of him then.

Megatron hauled open the polycarbonate screen. The size of him was obscene, his cold, dead face, molten-metal optics. In any other mech, he would be a handsome, elegant creature, but in him the beauty was turned in on itself, made hideous.

He gave Mirage a look that made Mirage's protoflesh freeze.

Shaking, Mirage stepped back.

Behind Megatron, Starscream was slumped in the corner, like a discarded thing. It should have made Mirage glow with schadenfreude. Presumptuous enemy, getting what he deserved. Then why this needle-poke of remorse? Why was there no joy in watching him so small and broken behind Megatron?

"Orbit, Crush. Take him."

The two young Decepticons did Megatron's bidding, but hesitation was writ large on their unformed faces. There had been something so uncompromisingly violent in Megatron's features. Mirage had only ever known the gentle company of Autobots, the candid, calm discussion of wrongdoing. He had heard of true cruelty but had never experienced it.

Mirage withdrew, the oddest feeling of discomfort weighing his joints.

He stood alone in the corridor, listening to them hauling Starscream to his feet, and a cold feeling wormed into his spark. What was he doing? A ship invaded by Decepticons and here he was standing around, doing nothing about it?

_Complicit, Mirage?_

Why did his conscience sound like Prime's voice? Why did his spark seem to frost over and dim? He retreated into subspace, losing visible light reflection, and padded away with a thief's soft steps.

He heard a voice in English. "Where did he go?" followed by Megatron's smooth, "He's of no use to us. We'll head back to the redoubt."

Mirage picked up his pace. The empty ship was filled with whispers, the geological movements of the planet stretching and settling around the buried ship, making it sigh and mutter in a secret metal language. _You shouldn't have done that, Mirage. You shouldn't have._

The majority of the Autobots were still out in the neutrino range, waiting for the long distance sensors to pick up the whispers of distant civilizations. He needed to be out there, listening over the cool distances, not where the walls seemed to press in, hot and claustrophobic.

He stumbled out into the just-dawning day, gasping, sensed the heat-traces of something else with his same invisible skin. Them. But only the remnants of them, for the Decepticons had left as quickly as they had come.

Blink, and you'd think it a recharge-dream.

A group of 'bots were packing up some of the detector arrays, congratulating each other on a successful night. The humans, still roly-poly in their puffy jackets and mittened hands, congregated around glowing laptops as if they were bright idols.

Wheeljack saw Mirage first, materializing into warming air and staggering towards them as if energon-drunk.

"Mirage? Aren't you supposed to be guarding the base?"

Mirage could barely speak. He gasped, and fell on one knee as the enormity of what had happened dawned on him.

"Decepticons...Megatron...he's here..."

* * *

Their captors left moments before Ironhide arrived with the others in tow. Prime saw a white knee, and felt fingers that could only have been Ratchet's at his neck.

"Nnnn," he implored. "Nnn."

"He's been hit with a null ray," said Jazz. "He's been in stasis since then."

"Any other injuries?"

"No," said Jazz, hesitant to commit even to that diagnosis. He'd stood there and listened to Prime's frantic murmurs, knew what they meant.

"I'll need to give him an Energon flood. Perceptor..."

"I'm on it."

"Nnn."

_Perceptor, check my quarters, for Primus' sake..._

He didn't hear him. Nobody could hear him. Ironhide ordered a sweep of the ship, but none of the instructions covered his quarters. He sent out frantic internal-comms to Starscream, even though Star had not the equipment to hear him; even prayed, although Cybertron was a billion light-years away and the Matrix responded to no-one.

Ratchet and Wheeljack turned him over, so instead of a view of the floor, he looked up at the ceiling.

"Thank Primus that Mirage made it out when he did. We might have all walked into a trap," said Wheeljack. He paused when an odd silence descended on them.

"What?"

Jazz said, "They took Starscream."

Wheeljack looked down at Prime, and even his mask could not hide the horror in his optics. "Oh...Primus..."

"What happened to Starscream?"

Perceptor had returned, caught the end of the conversation. "What happened to him?"

"They wanted Starscream back," said Prowl before Jazz could speak. "They were going to start killing us off one by one, but Mirage had to take Megatron to him. He had no choice. They would have killed us all, and Prime."

"Nnn!" moaned Prime.

Ratchet caught a canister of energon thrown at him. Footsteps, running. Prime willed his fading strength into Perceptor, willed him to get to a door still shut, Starscream still all right, willed those things even though he knew otherwise the moment the soldiers had left, because they had gotten what they had come for.

"Nnnn!"

"Not long now, Optimus." Ratchet squeezed his hand briefly, checked reactions indiscernible to all but him. "This antidote works fast, but take it easy. You'll be disoriented for an hour at least, so you stay put, no matter what, okay?"

Ratchet slid the fine needle of the canister into the place between exoskeletal plates at Prime's neck, depressed the plunger. His face was the first to be returned to him, and Prime swivelled his optics Ratchet's way, whispered, "Help him."

"Shh." Ratchet laid a hand on Prime's shoulder. "Perceptor's going to look."

He hissed again, "_Help him_."

"Are you sure he's gonna be fine, he fell kind of hard." Prime could now look to see Jazz and saw that he was in bad shape, one arm lashed to his side in a crude splint, a visor-optic cracked, dented head. He must have struggled fiercely to resist the initial raid.

Perceptor came back to them, widecast on the internal-comms. _"Primus, he's gone..."_

Soft steps, almost non-existent, and the familiar smell of displaced atoms.

"We checked the forecastle, Prowl," said Mirage. "It's clean. They must have come in through the-"

Prime lunged to his feet, screaming like a slaughtered animal. Ratchet and Wheeljack caught him. Even stasis-weak he threw them off, and dragged his half-paralysed body after Mirage. Prowl leapt in and held him and Prime roared, "He was going to be my sparkmate, we were going to be bonded and you killed him, _you killed him!"_

Mirage leapt back, half in and out of invisibility, optics wide and indignant.

"He was going to kill Jazz, he was going to kill all of us!" Mirage shrieked back. "I saved us all, I'm the hero here, you've never shown me gratitude ever, not for all I've done!"

Prime inhaled, certain that his mass had gone critical and any minute he would explode. A wave of loathing overwhelmed him. "What more do you want from me? Mirage, you've taken the only thing that mattered to me..." A crushing tone in his voice made even the walls buckle.

Prowl sensed the change, knew that Prime had passed a subjective barrier and fallen into unexplored emotional territory, the Dark Place, the shadow space that existed in every spark, for he threw his arm about Prime's waist, tried to hold him back, "No, Optimus take it easy..."

Prime slowed, but not stopped, and with naked deliberation cracked opened his chest-plates. "Is this what you want?" Bright spark like a diamond in a photon stream. "Or perhaps you want more than that?" He started to fumble at the inner locks, the gimbals holding the spark in place, and the convolutions of the Matrix beneath it.

Prowl tried to grab Prime's hands, but Prime kept advancing on Mirage. "Is this what you want?" The gimbal wouldn't budge, so Prime tore it off as if it were just a minor obstruction, the metal tearing away from protoflesh, sending silvermass spraying over Prowl's shocked face. "_Is this what all of you want_?" The other gimbal was wrenched out, and now the spark hung exposed and free without its casing and Prime kept fishing into his chest and tearing bits of himself out, wires and clasps and exoskeletal supports and clumps of unformed protoflesh because there was a Pain there, a source of torment that he couldn't be rid of and Starscream was dead and his sparkmate was dead and the Matrix was burning him like a fist of lava and his awareness converged on his Pain and his hands were rimed with silver and there was silver on the floor and his voice from far away moaning _have me then, have the slagging Matrix that's all I slagging am_ and Jazz was screaming _make him stop, just make him stop,_ and Ratchet's face filled his entire field of view, anguished beyond despair and Prime roared and grabbed his bare spark in his silver-soaked fist and pulled and then there was noth-

...

...

...

...

* * *

... TBC


	16. Meaning

* * *

**PART TWO**

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* * *

Sixteen: Meaning

* * *

Ratchet's stirring woke him, the medical officer beginning a long segue into a recharge dream. In a far corner a centrifuge finished its spin cycle, whirred down with a tired sigh. With mechanical simpatico Ratchet muttered an unfamiliar word, a name perhaps, some long-ago memory, before turning over and settling back into deep recharge at Prime's side.

The medbay was dim, blue shadows spilling across reflective floor, chrome picking up highlights. The gel in a stasis bath burped aqua bubbles like a geothermal pool. A young 'bot who'd transformed himself inside out a week before, coughed, moved under his thermal covering, joined Ratchet in recharge. A diagnostic device finished a cycle, results poured across a screen.

Deeper still came the creaking of the ship in the mountain, titanium groaning under age and the weight of rock. Continental plates bumped and crumpled on the far side of the world, a butterfly flapped its wings in the Amazon, a storm howled off the Aleutian Islands.

Prime looked at Ratchet's shoulder for a long time. You've never been so close to anyone since _Him_.

If not for the medbay surroundings, Prime could imagine himself fallen into a time slip, some alternate universe where Ratchet had become his sparkmate instead, and now lay next to him as a bonded might. How would such an outcome have changed them? Would he have taken on Ratchet's seriousness, his caution? Would Ratchet have become like him, committed to his people, but filled with all the amorphous yearnings of a Reborn? Their time would have been stretched thin. They would have been so busy with their own concerns, Prime's soldiers, Ratchet's patients.

But it would have been a pairing that others would have agreed to, would have nodded their heads over and said, _They deserve each other_.

A weight was on Prime's chest. He went to touch it, found he could not move his hands. So they had tied him down. He wanted to muster indignant anger, but there was no response from burnt-out emotional fuses. He could feel nothing. He glanced down to the dark mass, as if it were a mech-demon sitting there, a louring thing with a dozen warning-light eyes. His processors caught up with him, and the mass became an artificial spark-pack, a power unit supplementing his own. He guessed that it would remain attached until his own spark healed or until he died, whichever came first.

His spark still existed, like a stone in an open wound, stapled down into his protoflesh, gimbal supports sewn into the ragged edges. Behind the ruined spark the Matrix still pulsed, its metabolism nothing more than an untranslatable body-whisper, its long dead sleep. They had not yet taken it from him.

Sensing a change in the darkness Ratchet woke, on-lining his optics. Groggy from recharge he turned to face Prime.

"Optimus?"

"Ratchet, why am I tied down?"

"After-effect of stasis. The trauma affected you, made you automatically reach for the part that was hurting you most." Tired, small voice in the darkness. "It's instinctive in warriormechs, to remove shrapnel, parasites. Not sparks or Matrices, but that's what happened."

"Have they found him yet?"

Ratchet rubbed an optic. "No."

"But they are searching?"

Ratchet turned over, propped himself up on his elbow. In the frail light he looked exhausted, a mech who had spent many days awake in vigil.

"Prime," he said, "Optimus. We've been monitoring the Decepticon communication channels. It's not good."

He reached between them, picked up a small box attached to a finger of wire, ran his opposable digit over the Perspex cover and the LED green eye.

Prime wouldn't let Ratchet go. "Please. Tell me what you've found out."

Tell me, his optics said, and he stared at Ratchet, willing him not to say what he feared most. Ratchet's forehead chevron mirrored his frown.

"They've been singing the funeral songs for him. Megatron will allow them that, otherwise he'd have a rebellion on his hands."

Ratchet watched Prime intently, watched his face, so he knew, when Prime knew, what it meant for those songs to be sung, and when the agony presented itself, monstrous and unbearable, he flipped the box cover and hit the switch.

* * *

Now he woke to a human voice saying, "But Wheeljack, it's grown pups!"

Static image, growing clear. Carly in green overalls, hands black from peat-moss, pointing to a cactus plant sitting in a terracotta pot, incongruous against the shiny inorganic metal surrounds of the medbay. The gold band on her finger winked under bright lights. A leaf was in her hair.

"Maybe if we cut them off?"

She shook her head. "Once you see pups, the mother-plant is going to die. We'll never get it big enough now." She poked a grey, succulent leaf. With a kind of dull pattern-recognition, the crazes on the thorny leaf reminded Prime of protoflesh just on the point of exoskeleton formation.

Reminded, because he'd stroked small proto-wings like once, so long ago it seemed like a million years, when the universe was still hot, when everything made sense. Not like now, this ice-time, this entropic ache in his wounded and broken spark.

"...we'll transplant the pups into a new pot and see how that goes. Ratchet said he needs at least a square metre of protoplating before she can have any medical application." She stroked the plant as if it were a loved, if extremely ugly, pet.

Wheeljack stared at the plant, half-horrified at the vegetable-mech combination. "You're certain this works?"

"My professor at university did something similar with human tissue. This thing was hideous, hair and skin and... oh my! Wheeljack, Prime's awake!"

Wheeljack shot him a glance. "No-one's home," said Wheeljack softly. "He's awake most times, but Ratchet's keeping him in twilight for now."

"Why?"

"Nobody told you?"

She shook her head. "Spike's been in Peru. He's preparing some exegesis on an off-world holy text and I'm...I've been feeling this sadness here. I didn't know if it was just me, because I miss my husband, but, well, I didn't want to ask."

"Starscream. He's dead."

Intake of breath.

"What happened?"

"Megatron came for him last month. He was executed for treason."

Carly touched her forehead, put her hands on her hips, looked around and tried for composure, decided not to take it. Her eyes shone.

"He sung me his song. Spike did. At our wedding."

Wheeljack didn't reply, his processors, wired for science, not really useful for anything involving emotion, would only have seen it as a sparkling might, immense and unquantifiable.

"They were lovers, Starscream and Optimus?"

"Yes."

"Oh," she said, "oh." Touched her wedding band, rolled it about her finger.

"We knew," Wheeljack continued quietly, "as soon as Megatron came. He needed him dead. He'd been losing control of his people since Starscream had gone."

"Haven't you tried to find him? Or at least his body..." She couldn't finish.

"Where would we start? We can't even find the Decepticons. The only reason we tracked him the last time was through Optimus. They're invisible to us."

Carly's distress was palpable, even from such a small organic creature. "Wheeljack, let's continue this later. I'd like to call Spike. I just want to hear his voice."

They left the medbay, Wheeljack carrying the modified cactus at arm's length, Carly wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand and sending dark lines across her cheeks. Prime went back to looking at the ceiling. Some of the insulation had tufted away up there, hit by the clumsy headpiece of a too-tall Autobot, or the constant geophysical stresses on the ship slowly warping the panels untrue. Twilight or no, they had still kept him tied down and immobile. In the fug of dopant he wondered why they hadn't taken the Matrix from him and been done with it.

A chirp of Autobot voices outside, Ratchet and Wheeljack, then Ratchet hurried in, sighed when he saw Prime watching him.

"You knew I was awake."

"I was hoping not to...for a while longer," he admitted. "You're not quite recovered." An uncomfortable silence. "I can put you back under, if that will help."

Prime returned to the ceiling. He knew that there were times when an injury could penetrate so deeply and for so long that there was nothing left to hurt.

A hand on his own, squeezing tight. "I've treated soldiers who've lost sparkmates in battle. You don't have to suffer."

Prime didn't want to look at him, but Ratchet reflected off all the shiny surfaces in the medbay, a hundred pairs of optics looking at him, just as there were always optics on him. "We were never sparkbonded. It wasn't allowed."

Small voice, Ratchet speaking words he didn't want to say, had promised himself never to say, but said it anyway. "A Prime sparkbonding is only a formality. The asking of permission is a formality. The Prime's word is law, he asks for none."

"Mirage said that to me."

"Yes."

The centrifuge started to whirr again, a ball bearing off-centre scraping against the track made the device scream in a long, anguished subsonic wail.

There was no need to say more. Ratchet would have given Mirage the idea he was still sparkbonded, inadvertently or otherwise. Validated by another, Mirage had taken action to win him his Prime.

"I think you can flip that switch now," said Prime tersely.

* * *

The next time he came out of twilight, he had been moved to a quieter and more private section of the laboratory complex. Prime watched as Ratchet opened his chest-plates with extreme care, inspected the bruised and swollen surface. The spark glowed weakly, but glowed of its own accord. The spark-daemon was put aside.

Prowl stood behind Ratchet, his own chevron caste-mark making him solemn. The stresses of being a leader while Prime was indisposed would have taken their toll. More than once others would have demanded of him, _we must take the Matrix out of Prime, place it in someone more stable_.

Prime was still carrying the Matrix, so Prowl would have fought hard for him. Still in despair at having let so many of his own down, Prime rolled his optics, the only things he had control over. He caught sight of Wheeljack-initiated experiments, the exo-plated cactus, a large-scale model of earth insects tending to their Queen. The Queen was bloated with eggs, too big to move. It was she who was the slave, not her myriad attendants.

"I'm going to untie you now. I don't want you to try anything stupid."

Prime gave Ratchet and Prowl both a low look. "I don't remember any of it."

He didn't say how keenly he did remember, the hate he had felt, the way the Matrix had hurt him, as if it were the thing in the chest that had poisoned any chance of happiness he could have had, how every self-protective routine in him had screamed, _get it out, make it stop._ Or maybe it was Jazz who had said it, and that's where his memory failed him, on approach to that split-second of dazzling relief, a no-moment that was matched only perhaps in overload..

He remembered. He had made it stop.

"You gave everyone a fright. I tried to tell them it was an after-effect of stasis, the trauma making your body reject itself, but Prowl wanted you secured."

Ratchet released his bonds, watched Prime cautiously as he raised his hands over the spark chamber. There was a moment of panic, then Prime closed his chest-plates with a final, decisive click.

"I've lain around here long enough." His voice sounded, even to him, flat and without inflection. "There's work to be done."

Prime sat up, swung his legs out over the edge of the examination table. His balance wavered before the gyros kicked in. Ratchet reached out a hand, then thought the better of it. "Optimus, if you need to talk..."

"About what?"

"You know. You lost someone important to you. I know what it's like..."

Prime turned on Ratchet, battle mask up, optics constricted to pinpricks. Ratchet withdrew.

He climbed off the table. His weak spark didn't give him the energy to walk with any speed, but he moved decisively enough that Ratchet and Prowl didn't try to stop him leaving.

He followed his own internal compass, went back to the place he should not have left.

Don't go.

Sitting there, close to overload, waiting for him to finish.

Don't go.

Long walk made longer from his weakness. Twice he had to stop, shoulder the wall, catch his energy.

The blast doors to his quarters were not locked. Only the privacy screen was pulled across like a cataract over a human eye. Prime let himself in, and it was as if he stepped into silence, into a tomb. Evidence of a struggle that had been cleaned up. Teletraan's console had been knocked off the wall, but someone had placed her, dented and broken, back on the supports. Scratches in the floor. Dull streaks where spilt protoflesh had been wiped up. Exhausted, Prime sat on the end of his berth. His hands pressed into the memory foam. Don't go...

"Uh, Prime, can I come in?"

The sound of another voice startled him, when everything seemed so muted here. A pale face in the doorway, body-armour the same red shade as his own exoskeleton.

"Perceptor..."

Without waiting for an invitation Perceptor stepped through the portcullis and sat next to Prime on the berth. His shorter legs dangled off the side. Prime half wanted him to move away. He felt too vulnerable now, too weak to bear emotional contact. For a long time they said nothing.

"If it's any consolation, Mirage is tearing himself up about this."

"About Starscream, or that I can't ever speak to him in friendship again?"

Perceptor shrugged. "He's an Alpha. This has been difficult for him too."

"I can't believe you're defending him."

"Neither can I." Half-smirk, fading. "Primus, I miss him. I can't believe he's gone."

Prime wished for Ratchet's switchbox. "Perceptor," he started, "I don't...I can't talk..."

"I'm not here to reminisce," snapped Perceptor. "I'm done with grieving. I'm done with that pain. He would never have wanted it - he was a Decepticon, it would have shamed him."

"Unfortunately some of us are Autobots," Prime countered, quiet.

Perceptor shook his head vehemently. "I'm here to tell you I found something when I was cleaning up the place."

"You cleaned up?"

"And found something."

Prime pressed his hand to his chest. The question from the Sparkbonding Ceremony came to him unbidden: Why do you wish to divide yourself so, when your strength is in your spark unbreached? His spark had been breached, and he was not prepared yet to move into and past that agony. He had a sudden, striking awareness that whatever Perceptor was going to say would make him face his pain head-on.

"I found something scratched into the back of the Teletraan console. It could be you, it could be old, but then again, it might not."

"Let me see it, then."

Perceptor pulled out a small piece of broken polycarbonate resin. On one black surface, a few hasty scratches, that could have easily been from the fall.

Could have, but was not, because he recognised one scratch-jumble. An ideogram.

"That's a word."

Perceptor brightened. "I knew it. I knew you'd know."

"It's just a pair of words." Prime didn't go on to say that as a pair they were less than meaningless. Several Old Cybertronian ideograms were needed to construct a workable sentence.

"But what do they say?"

Prime didn't want to look at them. It seemed so useless in the face of what happened.

"Please Prime, I know this is a Old Cybertronian. Only the Elders know it, but you were raised in the Temple. Perhaps you could give me some clue."

"Perceptor..." he started, and looked at the science-bot, his bright face filled with hope.

Everyone needed to grieve their own way. Prime internalized his feelings, but Perceptor was an Alpha, needed action, needed to know and share everything.

He sighed in defeat, pointed at one scratch-picture. "That first one? Heaven. But without the inflection that denotes the spiritual realm of the All-Spark. The other means energy. To burn."

"That's it?"

"Look, this is an old written language. Nobody has spoken it for a million solar years. Most of the ideograms only have meaning if they're constructed in a group of six, with a clause-mark attached. It's complicated, and language was never my strength."

"Oh." Perceptor looked at his scratched resin, disappointed.

Prime stood up. "I have to go. I know losing him hurt you as well. It was my fault. I should have looked after him."

Perceptor remained on the berth, and Prime left him there, sing-song Alpha-bot accent murmuring all permutations of the words as if by some desperate miracle he could pull meaning out of nothing, "Heaven-burning, heaven-energy, sky-burning, sky-fire..."

* * *

TBC


	17. Paraselene

Seventeen: Paraselene

* * *

Epso Tesselax, Underlord of the Dead End Arrondissement, was in no mood for dancing, or singing or any variations of love play, for his guest was partial to none of these things. Anything that couldn't influence a visitor had no importance for him. In a fit of pique he sent his servants away. Only his best slave, the exquisite Solarstar, was kept with him. The smaller mech still understood his people's immoral language, could be of some use.

"You understand I gave fealty to the Elders of Iacon. These discussions are not with their authority." Tesselax said to Megatron. "If they find you here, they will take up arms against me, cut off what little energon I receive."

"Then we must be certain that I am not found."

Megatron spoke a graciously old-fashioned version of the Dead End patois. Tesselax always wondered where this massive warrior had learnt such refinement and nobility, especially when he had the look of a brute about him. There were rumours that he had been a gladiator before becoming a leader, but Tesselax was not too certain of this. The fighting caste, to which Decepticons were linked, never held much importance on learning. Megatron had the taint of culture and education about him, indications of having been raised in high places.

Not quite so big, Megatron's offsider was definitely gladiatorial. He wore the battle mask of a pit-fighter, the broad articulated chest of a _multiple_. He was not one mech but several living in symbiosis. The multiple's name was horrendously complex. Solarstar translated - in poetic Autobot: _The Oscillation Of White Noise,_ in Dead Endian: _Soundwave,_ and in Tesselax's own secret opinion _Abomination_. He swapped looks between the two mechs, despising them both but too canny to make them aware of it.

They knew, of course. Knew that he feared them more than the anger of Autobot Elders. But how easy it was to make promises about Decepticons when they were scattered and far away! Not so much when they lounged in your chambers.

"I'm afraid I have nothing to offer you, Lord Megatron," simpered Tesselax. "Even Polyhex is out of my control. The Autobot Council feeds my energon into that city, and yet it is not enough to keep the inhabitants from growing restless."

Megatron's smile was a no-smile. "Polyhex does not concern me at the moment. In time, I will recover what is mine. But for now I have a request that I hope you can fulfil."

Not a request, an order. Tesselax tried to appear magnanimous, but only managed resigned.

"If it can solve all our differences, then of course."

"I have brought a gift," said Megatron, "a conditional gift."

"Conditional?"

"An addition to your harem. Use him whichever way you must for him to earn his keep, but keep him alive."

"Alive, Lord?" Megatron was not known for his merciful nature.

"Alive. He has more political use alive."

Tesselax exchanged a glance with Solarstar. Despite their uneven status they shared a moment of concern as equals. Political use? Tesselax had his indentured workers, the ones who worked the alleys and conduits of Dead End for pleasure or otherwise. But life in his harem was also highly politicized, required careful management. One could not allow just any mech to wander in and spoil what had taken several revolutions around the sun to build.

He was not one for walking, but Megatron forced Tesselax to walk, in that way of his when he said, "Come with me," and Tesselax had to go with him or else be seen as unaccountably rude. Waddle after Megatron he did, Solarstar keeping careful distance behind. Another group of 'Cons, young, no colour-nanites on their grey armour, loitered at an access conduit. They stood to attention as Megatron arrived.

"Bring him out."

For Primus' sake, thought Tesselax, let him be at least attractive enough so he can pay for his own energon.

His spark sank as he saw the limping 'Con being shoved down the conduit. A greying creature with a battlefield support on his heel, protoform wings still not grown back from a massive injury, hunched over from pain and exhaustion. The head was covered with a sack of chain mail - no great logical leap to suppose the rest of him would be in as equally poor condition as well. Tesselax knew enough about mech design that this one existed as negative mass, that his weight and power were folded into hidden dimensions. A mech like that needed double the rations of a regular 'bot just to stay alive.

"You must excuse me," said Megatron, the shadows catching him, enfolding him and embracing him as one of their own, "but he is also blind. His eyes were lost in an unfortunate accident so your little slave must lead him."

_Slagging Rusted Primus!_ thought Tesselax, but he only smiled and nodded.

"His name is Aster. He is dearer to me than my only spark. You understand?"

"Whatever Lord Megatron desires."

* * *

He ended up in the medbay after a week, and not by his choice alone - Ratchet had caught him in between meetings, in between his constant routine of delegation and training and scouting.

"Optimus, you must try and get some recharge. You can't keep working like this."

Ratchet ran to keep up with Prime, his shorter legs not quite giving him the momentum to keep up with his leader, especially since he seemed intent on driving himself into the ground with work and work, and burning out as many circuits as he could in the meantime.

"I'm just clearing some of the administration," Prime was blunt, "that's accumulated since I've been indisposed." He entered the War Room, and Ratchet paused only briefly before barging in after him.

Jazz and Prowl were halfway through giving a briefing to a group of human delegates. They did not expect to see Ratchet rushing in after Prime, shaking with indignant anger.

"Uh, Ratchet," Jazz started in Autobot, "this is a confidential..."

Ratchet turned on Jazz, his optics hot-white. "I've known Optimus since he was a spark-child and before, and I'm ordering him to get recharge! If this goes on any further..." He wheeled his attention to Prowl, "you'll have another dead Prime on your hands."

Prowl stepped forward, cool despite the outrage he would have felt. "That was a low thing to say, Ratchet."

With an exhale of defeat, Prime waved his second-in-command down. "Ratchet's right," he replied. "Tell the humans that there's been an emergency, and I will be back on board tomorrow."

That was how Prime ended up back in Ratchet's medbay, attached to wires again. This time Ratchet sat next to him and they talked for a while, Ratchet cradling the stasis box in his hand.

"I don't know why this should affect me so much." Prime stared up at the ceiling. That same dent was still there since he'd last seen it. "I've seen so many friends die. Good friends, who were with me since my days in the Celestial Temple. I mourned for them, knew I had to keep going. But this..." He turned to Ratchet, unspoken pleading in his optics. "It's like I'm being crushed. I'm smothered. Everything's so dark."

"Optimus..."

"He was only a Decepticon prisoner. Less than a slave. But when I was with him..." He could find no words for that transcendence that being with Starscream had brought him. Gone now. His life seemed to have reduced in size.

Ratchet fidgeted with the box. "On old Cybertron," he started, "before you were re-born, we would not have spoken so closely, you and I. I mean, as a Prime to his medic."

Prime nodded for Ratchet to continue. Ratchet did, and he slipped into an odd cadence, not his usual sarcasm that came from being an older 'bot surrounded by those too young to know.

"To carry the Matrix, the spark of Primus, made us treat the Prime individual as holy, sacred. In all his permutations he was sheltered from the worst of our natures, every contact a ceremony, ritualized. Even the most basic and necessary ones."

He held Prime's hand like a parent would hold a child's, and old memories made his optics dim.

"They made you the perfect warrior, the ideal carrier for His spark, but you're more innocent and naïve than any ordinary Autobot. You have no sparkmemory of such unmonitored intimacy. Oh, you've had sparksex before, and by all accounts you're a skilled and generous lover. You've had to be, with your size, how a partner would be so intimidated by being with a Prime.

"But what you and Starscream shared - it has overwhelmed you. You have no guiding memory to lead you through this experience."

Prime listened to Ratchet, grasped at an idea. "I would have thought maybe Orion Pax could have countered that. He'd have led a real life."

Ratchet gave a low, thinking hum. "Yes, the Elders chose him to provide your body, and no doubt he would have experienced a life far beyond that of a Prime. But he was vetted closely and very little of him would have remained in you apart from body-memory. They were certain to choose someone with only superficial connections, someone not too bright."

"I feel them sometimes," whispered Prime, "all the parts that make me."

Ratchet gave a tight smile, squeezed his hand once more. Prime went on, "I just wish I could have spent more time with him. In joy. Not because I was desperate, or hungry for him. I owed him - he deserved - better than that."

"I'm going to put you under. And you'll recharge properly, okay? You're no use to us simple, or dead."

Prime hung on to Ratchet, his voice gone to static. "Don't let me dream. Don't let me dream about _him_. It hurts me too much. If I turn off my optics I see his face..."

"I won't let you dream," Ratchet said, pulling himself free. He flipped the switch, and buried his face in his hands.

* * *

When Megatron had left, Tesselax dropped the requirement for niceties. Simmering with anger, he pulled the hood off his new arrival's head and swore, "Primus' Blood!" loudly in Common Autobot, and the Decepticon struggled against his chains and shrieked back at him in no kind of speech at all, only static garble, ruined optics hideous against his face (_his face!_). Tesselax shoved the hood back on him and pushed him towards Hyperion, his loyal guard, wailing, "Get it out, get it out of my sight!"

The guard struggled with the Decepticon. Even half-paralysed from hunger it tipped him over and bolted for the doorway. Both Scour and Void, the two Empties, fell over each other in an effort to catch him. Void fell too close to a foot, hitting his head on the metal floor, giving his location away with a dull clang. The last thing he saw was the prisoner's head swinging about - then Void's boxy head was kicked clean off his shoulders.

"Primus dammit," shouted Hyperion, tripping over Void's head. The exoskeletal plates at his hand shredded away, revealing the nul-gun mechanism beneath it.

He shot the escapee clean in the back. It fell, face-down and smoking.

Tesselax began to yowl and cry like a mad thing, "you killed him, you killed him!"

"You wanted him gone," said Hyperion sullenly.

Scour picked up Void's head and began to wail. The other courtesans of the court segued to the keening and joined in out of sheer panic - if a neighbour was making a noise it would be best if they made one too.

Out of the cacophony only Solarstar had the sense to approach Megatron's gift with a stasis girdle.

He himself had been hit by Hyperion's weapon twice before - both times for refusing him service - but Solarstar was a noblemech despite his current designation. Why, even the Prime had bedded him once.

He still remembered it as separate from all his other transactions. A horrible, painful experience, but worth it for the status it now gave him in the harem. His asking price was raised tenfold. Only the best came to him.

Sometimes they asked, in excited whispers, what it was like to have a Prime inside him. Solarstar made claims about Prime's size, his prowess. He declined to mention how Prime's size had frightened him. No slight Senator, the Prime's frame was solidly powerful, a fighter's body. He did not say how the Prime had been drugged and mad, and called another mech's name in overload.

(_Starscream. Oddly enough, we have a leader by that name,_) Solarstar had recalled later, but did not assume they were the same person, the same way one would not assume that when one swore to Primus, they spoke directly to Him.

Solarstar stood over the fallen mech. No allegiance plates on him. He knelt and touched soft-fleshed protowings. Hyperion's weapon was weak, like everything about him. It had not struck the prisoner true, only knocked him offline temporarily.

With cool calmness, Solarstar fastened the stasis girdle around the prisoner's waist, and nodded to his frantic master.

"Be silent, all of you!" screamed Tesselax. "Silence I say!"

"You can move him now," said Solarstar. "Take him to my quarters. He can recover there."

Tesselax gave him a look of utter gratitude. It was not by chance alone that the little Decepticon was his favourite. Well might he have come in as the lowest ranked of all his chattel, a Decepticon traitor found spying and later won in a game of Tantalus, but he had schemed and plotted his way into Tesselax's favours. As such, Solarstar was rarely given to any but his most exalted guests.

Now Solarstar proved his worth further by admonishing Scour and Hyperion for their laziness, made them carry the mech into his rooms.

Solarstar had a slave himself, a small dark-hemisphere workermech, named Crossight. He was drab in olive and pale blue, mass-hobbled so that he was lighter than something a quarter his size, but loyal all the same.

"Look after him, Cross," Solarstar said. He began to wipe the dust off his exoskeleton with false indifference, as if was just everyday he allowed another onto the wide foam expanse of his berth. A crosscurrent stirred the billowing folds of gold-filament fabric overhead, casting yellow hotspots across the floor.

The Decepticon groaned. Cross removed the hood.

Not that it would do much difference, Solarstar realized. His first, brief glance was confirmed. _Aster_ - this oddly beloved of Megatron - was blind, optics torn out of him in some violent act that did not bear dwelling on. The injury was not new - he had lived in darkness for some time. Perhaps Megatron's fetishes leant towards the weak, the damaged.

"I would not make the presumptive comment that you are safe here, but one would expect the worst of your trials are over."

Solarstar spoke in ceremonial Decepticon, close phonetically to Old Cybertronian, that dead language. Only the highest ranked would be able to speak it - he'd go down the different familial dialects until he got the shibboleth of Aster's origins.

He did not expect Aster to answer. But his head turned towards him, and even without the optics Solarstar knew he'd been understood.

"You're no common Decepticon, Aster. You've created quite a stir, with Megatron's conditions of having you here."

Aster sat up with difficulty. There was no fear in him despite the fact that he was voiceless, only hate and cunning, and Solarstar recognized in him someone who could be either an asset or a rival. He knew ambition in others. He knew that Decepticon virtue to excel. Aster was no ordinary creature. Solarstar pondered on how to approach him. Honesty would be best. This one would know if he was being deceived.

"He took your voice from you, and no doubt you'll try and find another way to communicate. But Lord Tesselax fears Megatron. He will do everything he can to keep you here, and quiet. Nobody will help you, not even if an order came from Xaaron himself. Autobots may chastise, but Megatron will destroy, utterly."

Aster turned his head, rebellion in the set of his jaw.

"There's also another problem. What you look like."

The ruined face swivelled back to him. Something between shock and shame writ large across his features.

"You know, don't you, that you look like _him_."

The stink changed to something more acid and hateful. A raw connection had been hit.

Solarstar nodded. "So you know. Well. This could even be an advantage to you. We have clients with certain predilections."

Crossight returned with energon, enough to render Aster docile and dim-witted for several cycles. He'd need to be, lest he take action on that exposed anger roiling through him. Stasis girdles had been known to fail.

Solarstar withdrew, and went to find Tesselax. Even without speech Aster had said a great deal. Perhaps blindness had eroded him of the necessity for keeping himself behind a mask of indifference, or perhaps hearing a Decepticon voice had lowered his guard.

Solarstar remembered an Autobot client whose taste had run to Decepticon partners. _Despite all that they call you brutal and uncouth, you Decepticons have a greater emotional range then us,_ he'd said. _What you can understand and process, for us is only a void and immensity. I think this is what allows you to conceal your true selves so well._

They'd shared bodysex, he and the client. Afterwards their professional relationship had become strange, for Autobots could not appropriately deal with the nuances and blunt pleasure of mass sharing. Sensual excess could not be rationalized by them - they only felt it in the action/reward algorithms, the deepest, proto-organic selves. His addiction made him violent, especially when he could no longer pay for Solarstar's services.

Tesselax was not in his chambers. A scattering of invited service-mechs dallied with third-tier courtesans of the Kaon Deeps variety.

"Where is our Master?"

"Got angry. Disappeared somewhere," grumbled Hyperion. He watched a client entwining himself with a pair of twin-'bots and screwed up his face. "Slaggin' everyone's having the fun tonight except me."

Solarstar ignored him, just as he ignored the few excited glances that raked over his body. Slave he might have been, but he knew his Master with an intimacy a legitimate Bondmate might never achieve. He had seen the way Tesselax had recoiled at the sight of Aster, the shriek of _get him out of my sight._

Tesselax had another, deep room where he kept his treasures and curios. He rarely allowed anyone within, and only if he needed to display his wealth and knowledge to someone he wished to impress. More often than not the clumsy piles of fortune and refuse, piled together without regard for organization, would only make a noble client scorn him even more.

He was in there now, digging his way through the pile, his sharded, exploded body only getting in the way.

Politely, Solarstar moved a few pieces, a metal tablet bearing the works of Gilgatron, a servo supposed to have been part of Unicron's claw, a replica of the Prime Matrix in burnished platinum.

"I've spoken to him," said Solarstar. "By now he will be sleeping."

Tesselax scrabbled at a pile of more unnamable objects. "Who else has seen him?"

"Apart from you, and the useless scraps you call guards and whores, only myself and Crossight."

"Damn Megatron. Damn him. I hope it rains on his carcass. A nice acid rain. Tell me something dear Solarstar, some malicious gossip about him that will ease my pain a little."

Solarstar shrugged, toyed with a thin palladium crown. "I do not know, Master. Unlike Autobots, our leadership is kept hidden. Apart from Megatron we exist as a race of equals." Sharp little grin. "I know only that he is hated and feared, like a true leader."

Tesselax ceased his desperate searching.

"Are you pining, dear Solarstar? Do you miss your egalitarian people? Did it make you homesick, when you spoke to one of your own?" Said with a smirk, and Solarstar only smirked back, hate and respect a comfortable emotion between them.

"There is a reason," said Tesselax. "For him keeping his blind visitor here."

"What would that be, Master?"

"Shame, my dear. A mech kept in the place where whores are bartered, is one whose status must be reduced. Someone he fears to kill. Someone important."

"I doubt Megatron fears to kill anyone, Master."

Tesselax made a grinding noise in his throat. "Megatron knows just as well as I do the energon supplies have fallen. The dark-hemisphere starves. They will follow other leaders, and that is something he cannot bear."

As if the password had been given, a landslide of found objects slid away from a far wall, revealing a slab of quartz crystal ground into a cabochon container.

A dark-armoured mech stood within the sarcophagus. Or at least the exoskeletal remains of one stood there, the mass having been swallowed into subspace an eternity ago.

"Ah, he still glares at me with hate, my Warrior," spat Tesselax. "I would beat him for that, save for that he is already dead...are you not, my pet?"

The shell-corpse said nothing. He stared from his quartz prison at the pair of them with insouciant patience. A perfect specimen of an old Cybertronian Warriormech, a God Soldier, except for the gaping hole in his chest-plates.

"Seems to me you've returned to us, in the metalflesh my dear Paraselene." Tesselax hissed with envious hatred and fear.

And Paraselene stared back through the smeared stone, inscrutable, full of secrets. Nothing there gave anything away, not how his body came to be in Tesselax's hoard, how his spark had been torn from him and especially not, in all his fossilized silence, how he was almost identical to the mech in Solarstar's chambers.

* * *

TBC


	18. Falling

eighteen: Falling

#

#

#

Prime sat at Teletraan ONE's main console and off-lined his optics. Just for a second - but he needed that space to gather strength and read the final report, sign it off as closed, finished, done.

_Dead._

On the other side of the War Room's great circular space Prowl and Jazz pretended to work, pretended to be in contact and communication with the other Autobots on a dozen worlds; but Prime could sense their attention like a weight sliding across his shoulders. At least their concern was for him, Optimus, not the concern of others who saw him as little more than a life support system for the Matrix of Leadership, a body that would be discarded if the Matrix was ever threatened.

"The Elders were debating. Some wanted to have the Matrix taken out of you," Jazz had confided earlier. "Prowl and Ratchet fought a difficult battle in convincing them not to do it. If we were on Cybertron, in Iacon...yes. But this is Earth and we need this planet, and humans have weird social constructs and attachments. They like having a familiar face around."

Jazz didn't go into too many details. Didn't reiterate that Optimus Prime had been constructed around the Matrix, had been wired in intimately to the living fragment of Primus, had been grown around it like exoskeleton would grow over protoflesh. He was not merely a placeholder. If the Matrix was taken out of him, he would die.

_"This is an option we may have to consider,"_ one of the Elders had said.

Ratchet had been apoplectic. _"How many times does he have to die for you?"_ he'd shouted. "How many times do you have to tear him apart to contain your blasted Matrix?"

He'd said much more, but Prowl had bullied him out onto the Temple courtyard, told him to settle down or get sent home. They'd argued then, the barbs becoming more and more personal, old hurts being dragged out from a time even before the Decepticon War.

Prime on-lined his vision nanites, turned on the screen.

A selection of audio-visual recordings. Some of empty corridors. Other files were vague, showing quick flashes of a head, a shoulder, crimson optics. A dry commentary track muttered for each one. The Decepticon incursion had been made during the neutron telescope tests. The Ark security team had factored in a certain level of neutron noise, but somewhere along the chain the security systems began to glitch and fail, internal-comms had been compromised, and the Decepticons had found a way in.

_How had they known?_

Spies, most probably. Prime knew there were Autobot sympathisers in the Decepticon ranks, just as much as there would be Decepticon alignments within the Autobots and humans. Perhaps the Autobot policy of keeping weapons out of human hands had caused some to open up to Decepticon trade and flattery.

_But why come just for Starscream? The Decepticons were in the Ark. They had breached our defences, had the opportunity to do an incredible amount of damage. All this was available to them, and they didn't do anything._

He steeled himself, followed that logic path in the report. One frame caught Megatron, hideous in all his remade glory. Prime had to restrain himself to keep from punching the screen. There were no cameras in Prime's room, but here was Mirage standing outside the blast doors, swaying from foot to foot. Prime had to look away, looked back, saw Starscream (_oh Primus_) being dragged out, hurt but fighting. Prime froze the picture, touched the monitor's glass. There was a cry inside him, a pressure boil of despair, a feeling that was going to come out of him if he didn't lock down his vocaliser.

_Why not execute him there? Why take him back to your redoubt?_

The last recording, and the hardest one to watch. Prime lunging at Mirage. Prime in a panic, trying to pull out the burning _thing_ inside him. Him on the ground, face down in a puddle of liquefied protomass, his lifeblood ebbing away. As Ratchet and Wheeljack worked on him to keep him alive, Jazz stalked over to Mirage.

Mirage must have seen something in Jazz's face, had wailed, _"I saved your life!"_ before Jazz slapped him, hard, just once.

_"You might have saved my life, but you'll never know what it is to Sparkbond with someone. Never."_

Dust in the speakers made them splutter and crack. The recording ended. The screen went dark. There was nothing left to watch.

When Prime looked up, Jazz and Prowl had gone, but he was not alone.

Perceptor nodded towards the blank monitor. "More questions than answers, yeah?"

"You've seen this?"

He nodded again. "Did you notice the soldiers Megatron brought?"

"I did, but I didn't recognise any of them."

Perceptor pulled up a crash-seat and swung in close. "They were all young. Which means either he's giving his new recruits some much needed experience, or..."

Prime put the heel of his hand in his optic socket, not sure he wanted to wring more pain out of what had been wrung dry. "...Or?" he said, tired.

"...or there's dissention in the ranks. Whatever Megatron needed to do, he couldn't get any of the full-fledged Decepticons to help him."

"This is all hypothetical now." Prime pushed back from his seat. The sudden movement made the scar tissue around his spark jag and hurt.

Perceptor slid the thin slice of polycarbonate housing onto Teletraan's console. Perceptor had been carrying the scrap plastic around like a craven idol. The scratches on the surface looked like a roadmap to a long forgotten city.

"It's a name."

When Prime didn't reply, Perceptor pushed closer, insistent.

"Those words Starscream wrote? A name, not a message. I was thinking, how could a Decepticon know Old Cybertronian? Starscream was never recruited, he was sparked into the ranks, was a Decepticon from his first day alive. So he would only have known _this_ word as a name of someone important to him. Heaven Burning? Skyfire? I've run them through all the databases..."

His spark was hurting again. "Perceptor..."

"The name only comes up once. In the Golden Age. Between the Great War and the Decepticon War. A termination order. I wanted to dig in further, but my security level won't let me. I need an archivist."

#

"Slag it," said Ratchet, "why are you trying to pull this waste product on me now?"

"We need an archivist, Ratchet, and there isn't one on the entire ship." Perceptor followed Ratchet around the medbay and would not be shaken off. "You were around back then, you would have heard all the stories."

"Why don't you go ask Prowl?" Ratchet pulled up the lid of a glass pot on a heating element. A rank yellow steam poured out, making Perceptor splutter. Ratchet glared at Prime as he waited in the doorway, silently admonishing him for encouraging Perceptor's obsession. "Prowl was in the civilian Autobot army back then. He knew more old-guard Autobots than I ever did."

"This mech was no Autobot Ratchet. He was a Decepticon, I'm sure of it."

"Oh, well then I'm _certainly_ likely to know him." Ratchet slammed the pot lid down, waking the inside-out mech - who was looking more outside than in than he had the week before - and stalked away.

Prime watched as Perceptor cornered him again, sharp words were exchanged, and Ratchet stomped back in, chevrons twitching with agitation. "Did it occur to you Optimus, that this Skyfire might be more than someone Starscream just _knows_? He had a history when he came. You were not his first lover."

Ratchet probably didn't intend the barb to hurt, but it did hurt, and deeply.

"I've considered that." Prime said in a low growl. "I've considered that he had not trusted me to help him. That he needed someone closer than I ever was."

"But you're considering that he's still alive."

"Yes. No. I don't know."

"They sang funeral songs Prime!"

"They sang them, but there was no funeral, no body!" roared Prime in anguish. "Megatron would have paraded his corpse around like a trophy. Why didn't he do that Ratch? Why did he hide him?"

"Prime, there's no body, because he didn't want to make Starscream any more than a rallying point than he already is! Megatron keeps leading the Decepticons to their extinction, and Starscream has always been the one to pull them out. He is not going to allow him the slightest veneration!"

Prime threw the scratched resin plate onto the bench, pointed at the ideograms.

"Who was he Ratchet?"

Ratchet slumped. The pot lid clattered from the steam. "A scientist, that's all I know. Used to be an Autobot, but he changed sides."

Perceptor brightened - Prime could see him searching through memories of Starscream, searching for an offhand comment he might have made about his past, a clue, something.

But Prime was not so certain. "I thought you said that a change of allegiance couldn't be done."

Ratchet began to thump and throw his tools about, angry with something. Himself maybe, a deep seated anger. "Back then there was a size limit for non-military citizens. They were going to throttle him - reduce his energy consumption, his sentience - because he got too big. He had nowhere else to go."

"A scientist will always try to protect his mind," said Perceptor. The hope in his face was painful to see. How could Perceptor still believe in something when Prime couldn't?

Ratchet picked up the broken housing, ran his thumb over the snapped surface. "How could an Autobot have survived among Decepticons? He would have lost that mind of his. Probably did. In the end, he just flew away and nobody ever saw or sensed him again." Ratchet handed the housing back. "He's a ghost, Prime, a dead end. Leave it alone."

#

Less and less, his Earth-bound duties solved as distractions. In their discussions over a possible energon source, Prime attended a quorum between two Earth cultures, sat in the auditorium while the humans bickered and hurled accusations. Their constant fighting had been going on for generations before the visitors had come, and none of them had any intention of quitting. He sat there, incongruously huge with Ironhide and Jazz, while the humans looked at the mechs and each other as sullen as children torn apart in the middle of a brawl.

A human ambassador had said to Ironhide, "You have your disagreements that you cannot solve any other way than by fighting. What makes you any different from us?"

Prime had to secretly agree with her.

Perceptor had a project now, and wouldn't leave it alone, despite Ratchet's admonishments. More and more often his daily list of Teletraan access requests would have Perceptor's code. He was trying to track down that name, the history of that mech Starscream had evoked in one last desperate scrawl.

_You were not his first lover._

No he was not. And Starscream had never feared their size difference, had known how to adjust himself to accommodate the mass of a mech larger than him. Prime remembered the Decepticon in the Dead End brothel, whom he had hurt so casually just by being inside him, remembered the fear in his optics.

He'd never hurt Star. Perhaps only on the evening back on the sentinel-ledge, his inadvertent rape. But even then, it had been more emotional than anything, Prime's betrayal.

_You were not his first lover._

Skyfire, who taught Star how to write his name in old Cybertronian, and Star still remembered, after all this time.

His spark hurt.

Prowl came to him, after several days of meetings and quaintly one-sided technological exchange, their glass beads and baubles. The humans were hungry for anything of exosocial origin.

"We haven't really talked. Not since you woke," Prowl said, ignoring a cluster of humans who'd turned their cameras on him.

They stood on a windswept promontory overlooking a large city half-lost in an early-morning sea-fog. A large white statue loomed behind them, a human with arms thrown open as if trying to give air-resistance to a freefall. Painful memory of Starscream standing on the lip of the ledge, arms spread just so.

"We've been busy. We've changed their political systems quite rapidly by being here-"

"Optimus," Prowl interrupted, "you know what I mean."

The Falling Man looked sadly over Prowl's shoulder, and Prime followed his gaze. This city reminded him of Cybertron, all vertical blocks amidst older geology, and a dark expanse where the River Blood fed into its dark sea.

"If we had been bonded, Starscream and I - you would have been expected to give Jazz up. When Megatron turned his gun on him... That would have been your duty."

"Yes." Prowl was darkly serious. "Jazz and I have discussed this."

"And yet there was no move to even try and protect Starscream. None. You all knew our sparkbond was inevitable. Jazz tried, at least, but the rest of you..."

A squalling wind across the summit of the peak sent the few tourists running for shelter.

"Is this what you want? Someone to blame?"

"I just want to know why."

Prowl didn't reply. Folded his arms. Looked out over the ocean.

As if a dam had breached, Prime went on, "What does that mean, when my wishes are not forethought and met? Am I that extraneous that you just ignore what meant the most to me? Or is it just the Matrix that has meaning? Or am I not really a Prime? Am I just a simulacra until the real thing comes along?"

Their optics locked. Prowl would never lie.

"You made the wrong decision, choosing him."

Aching with betrayal he said, "I know Orion was only harvested because they needed a Warrior to fight Megatron. He still lives, but he's not a threat to them any more. Prowl, tell me the truth. Are the Elders thinking about deleting me?"

Prowl opened his mouth. Then closed it. His expression was hard. "They have found a way to ensure the Matrix lives without a host. They want to restore it to the Temple Dome in Iacon."

"You didn't think it was necessary to tell me that?"

"I served under three Primes. You think this is easy for me?"

Prowl reached over, pulled Prime into a hug. "I served under three Primes. I will serve you until my death."

He pulled back. "But I can't let you make the wrong decisions. Losing Starscream was the best thing that ever happened to you."

With that, he walked away, skidding down the mountainside and leaving Prime standing, more torn up than ever, under the Falling Man and his patient, gentle face.

###


	19. Falling Further

nineteen: Falling Further

#

#

#

When their duties among the humans were over, Prime cut loose and journeyed back to the Ark alone.

He travelled in his alternate form, taking four solid days to return, through highways lined with barbed wire and shantytowns, along abandoned roads where the tarmac cracked and blistered under an equatorial sun. Sometimes he would stray close to cities, populaces illuminated by a million streetlights like the Cybertron dark-side, protons burning across his sand-abraded exoskeleton like a hail of acid ice. A pair of fighter jets trailed him as he crossed the Rio Grande into New Mexico. He imagined that one was Starscream, returned to him whole and new, that all he had to do was stop, pull over to the side of that lonely highway, and he would come to him. Wished it with all his might.

But no Jornada del Muerto miracles here. The pilots must have recognised him even in his masquerade, for they gave him a friendly wing-waggle before heading back to their base.

The Ark called him, the way home called him, and after a journey of a night and a day, he slipped into the half-buried vessel unannounced. The others would smell him soon enough.

He went to the roof-top array, needing to talk. Didn't want to be alone in this concrete-set unhappiness. Needed someone who'd known Starscream, had not despised him. Who would understand.

As he expected, Perceptor was sitting among his far-scopes, waiting for the night to fall. Prime saw the back of Wheeljack's head, the soft blue glow of his temples, heard him laugh. Saw the two slabs of memory foam pressed next to each other under a rocky overhang, still showing the dents and valleys of mech-bodies in close contact.

"Perceptor..."

Wheeljack turned around first, saw Prime, saw his raw, beaten exoskeleton and the wild look in his optics. He stood up quickly.

"Oh," he said, "I think I've forgot to turn the...uh, something off."

Gave Perceptor's arm a quick squeeze before heading down the porthole and into the Ark's belly, leaving the two mechs alone.

Prime slid next to Perceptor. The science-bot fumbled with the remote control for his array. Pixel-primary colours scattered across his face. He glanced at Prime, uneasy with his silence.

"We've been seeing each other."

"How long?"

"Since...since before you got back with Starscream. Primus, it was tough. I just needed to share my spark with someone. Starscream wanted to be bonded, and I loved him, but he just wouldn't _do_ anything."

"Did he know?"

Perceptor nodded. "I think Star expected that I would relieve my needs elsewhere. We argued about it. I said didn't want to live that sort of life. But I did - I love Jack too. He's really something special."

Tired, Prime lay back on the Ark's nose, his exoskeleton surface tender and worn. He let himself feel the warm metal below him, the cooling sky above, and the constant ache in between like the weight of the world.

"It's good that you've found someone."

"Yes. Oh, I've discovered more about Skyfire while you were gone."

Prime looked up at the mesa, purpling in the fading light. "I don't really want to hear it."

"But..."

Prime turned on Perceptor. "You got to say goodbye to him. You got to tell him what you felt for him, you got to move on to someone else. I never did."

His spark hurt again, he raised his hand to his chest, grimaced.

"Optimus..."

"Putting this hope into me only hurts me, you understand? It hurts me to think of him alive, to think of what he believes when I haven't come for him."

"He left this name. This _name_, Prime, he wanted us to find out what it meant!!"

"And what if he is what Ratchet says? What if he is a former lover? Why do I have to put that on me? It ruins me enough just thinking of him with you!"

Perceptor stilled. The LCD display reflected in blue and greens off his earnest face as Prime continued.

"I used to lie in berth, thinking of you together." Prime could barely raise his voice beyond a whisper. "You spoke his language, and I could see what that meant to him, in this place where everyone hated him, where he had no status. I couldn't give him that. Just being with him... I brought him down."

_...Prime's whore..._

"But you had time together, in the end."

Could one call it time? Prime was wrenched back to their brief moments on the night of the neutron tests. Their frantic couplings, as if they'd known the end was near. His body shook with the memory - Star, all around him, Star so damaged and so vulnerable to him, opening himself with trust and love when he'd probably never trusted or loved anyone before. Maybe not even Skyfire, faceless mech who now lurked and swam through his logic cores like a leviathan.

There was a reason why Starscream had been so close to Perceptor, even during his darkest days, and it was that same motivation that now made the stocky little robot put his arms around him. Prime clung to him - not as a lover, but as someone who needed another to hold so very much.

"I know why you tried to take it out of yourself," Perceptor murmured. He put his hand over Prime's chest, over the Matrix. "Afterwards, when he'd gone. The others didn't understand, but I did. It was always in the way."

If he was asked later, he could never say why he did what he did. Maybe because was drowning then, as if he'd reached the brim with memories. He'd whimpered Starscream's name and cracked open his chest-plates, revealed his spark. Perceptor had not hesitated, for Prime was _Prime_ and was not to be refused. How could one contemplate refusing the Matrix bearer? It was an honour.

And a small part of Prime wished that Perceptor had told him to wait, that all he was doing was done out of grief, not love, not even lust, because in all these months he had waited patiently for Starscream to trust him with his spark, had held back that most intimate personal part of himself, thinking _the only one I want is you_.

For all that he was only submitting to this clumsy, unvoiced request Perceptor was understanding, and gentle, and conscientious of Prime's battered spark cavity. Supported his weight - no clashing and grinding of gimbals and rotator units, no hasty kisses and gasps of almost-overload. He approached Prime with the same respect and care as they had all approached him, every lover he'd had until Starscream came.

_Star, who bruised and hurt you, who you'd had to fight for, every step of the way._

Electricity arced between them. Prime's optics flickered, and his world folded in on itself, dimensional folds redacting themselves to a psychological singularity. They were no longer separate organisms now, but one bodymind, beyond conjoined.

And it was as if they had come to a great set of doors, his memories and Perceptor's own, and all Perceptor needed now was the password to be let through. The ghosts of Prime's past lovers waited at the shadowy portcullis, bowed and with respect. But there was a darkness there, a void that was meant to have been _him_ and was never occupied in his spark-heart, an empty thing that had grown hungry and hateful in all that time.

It stalked the edge of his memory gates, would not allow Perceptor entry. Crimson optics. Decepticon V on its arms as if carved there with a hot knife. Razor-edge wings. Starvation and slaver rimed the ground with silver strands as it stalked the entryway.

Perceptor sensed the thing, grasped its metaphorical meaning.

Tiny voce in the immensity, Perceptor whispering in his audio receptors. Not to him, but the dark thing that would have no other.

_I'm not going to replace Starscream. I only need to find out what he meant when he left us that message._

The hungry thing was not easily moved.

"Let go," whispered Perceptor, "I understand,"

Star had trusted Perceptor with his deepest secrets. Prime would trust him now. The thing retreated. The doors opened.

And Prime winced as he fell into another body, fell into a moment where he wasn't wracked with hurt and hunger it was as if he had been dunked into ice water, and for a split-second forgot everything.

_It's all right,_ Perceptor was saying, _it's all right,_ and Prime fell past the recent memories of Perceptor and Wheeljack in berth, their shared intimacies under a late summer sky.

Perceptor didn't try to stop him, knew what he was looking for, let him into that experience of seeing Starscream for the first time, still and unapproachable, but see - oh Primus - the way he looked at Prime from a distance, Perceptor saying, "Don't try to hide it from him," and experiencing Perceptor's own stab of regret. Perceptor knew that Prime and Starscream were going to be drawn towards each other like physical forces, the need between them real and insurmountable.

But there were intimacies Perceptor received that Prime never did, and Prime for the first time heard - and understood - Star in his own language. For Perceptor was Decepticon-fluent, and Star's voice, so rough and uncouth in English, was like silk and Teflon in Decepticon - gorgeous and beautiful voice made to flatter and seduce; said words like, "I want him totally, Perceptor. I want them to look at me and know that we belong together. When I'm not with him my spark hurts me, it hurts me..."

...and Perceptor, carefully, "Do you love Optimus Prime? Is that what you're saying?"

The reply was spat, in despair and confusion, emotions that a non-speaker would not have heard, "I don't love Optimus Prime..."

Perceptor, like his name, explained the differences in their languages. Explained patiently what love meant, to a Decepticon, to a human, to an Autobot.

He carded through those moments, though Star's stolen memories, his experiences with humans and science, "I learnt English from a human, Arkeville. But I much prefer you."

Faster now, to the terrible time when Star had come back from his capture by the Decepticons a broken mech, and now Perceptor put the barriers up, saying, no it's private, and took control, took him to one place in the past, when they had lain together. Starscream had tilted his head up to unseen stars, said, "Where's the gas giant they call Saturn, the one with the moon the humans call Titan...?" and Perceptor had moved his outstretched hand-

That was the mystery of a spark-alliance, that a joining of minds could find from the most torn and untouchable memory a word, a phrase, a moment-

- there. "But Star, you've never mentioned any interest in this part of the galaxy before," and Starscream had replied casually he'd gone to Titan once when he was very young, but it wasn't called that then, just some moon around a ringed, gas-giant planet.

And Prime hooked into Perceptor's consciousness, a brief question, forgotten, _you've seen so many planets, why remember this one?_ before Star had laughed and said that it was nothing.

But a part of Perceptor remembered. And now Perceptor was inside him, and was going deep, back through the folds of his past, through the long years where he'd given himself over to his leadership, where the days were grey with sameness, with death and war and bloodshed and deeper, and Prime was fighting Perceptor now - he'd never let any go this far. But Perceptor used his weapon, the patterns of his Alpha-Caste to gain entry.

Prime thought - if one could call this razor-slice of cognition thinking - _so this is why they were so keen to have an Alpha bond with me._ If there was more, it was swept away in the maelstrom of recollection and memory that he'd put away, went to the first moments of his creation, where the Protoflesh Thaumaturgie had sung songs over his new body, Autobot songs in Lower Cybertronian, that accursed language.

Prime only remembered torture, his own screaming. They gathered around his wracked newbody, stood in the puddles of his massblood and the sopping sheets of his torture-bed and sang, and sang; and occasionally one would pass out from exhaustion and hunger and psychic empathy, for in sentient creatures one cannot look upon pain without being destroyed, or numbed. And numb, one could not sing, could not open those connections, coax those cyberemones that only grew under audio-physical stimulation. They were remaking _him_ their Prime, growing him around the seething flame of the Matrix.

What he'd been before had gone, flayed and scraped away. There was nothing yet to come, nothing upon nothing. But the horror of it, to be cut and sliced apart, to be invaded by foreign matter that burned and burned and Perceptor held him tight, groaning in shared agony, saying, _stay with me Optimus, not long now..._before his spark seemed to cave in like gravity around a dying star.

And then as sudden as a slap, an island of no-pain. Cold walls, dripping with condensation. The gulp and sob of his live-dying breath as he lay newborn and massive on damp sheets. The Thaumaturgie had ceased singing for a short time. A pair were speaking to an unseen guard, hungry for information. The language was High Autobot.

_...the language of thieves and traitor's confessions..._

"What of the Decepticons? Are we still safe?"

"We may be safer. Their accursed scientist, Skyfire, has gone missing. His novice has joined their warriors."

"Praise Primus. Then we may yet raise a Prime, whole. How did this miracle happen?"

"Alpha Trion is sure that the novice killed him. They were exploring other galaxies beyond our own."

"A strange diversion, for someone charged with searching for our reborn Prime."

"Yes. Too easy to effect an accident, to leave the evidence rotting on some far planet away from Decepticon eyes. The Council takes this as proof Paraselene still helps us from beyond his broken spark."

"And you? You know of the Decepticons. What is your opinion of this...luck?"

A slight movement of air, as a mech shuffled uneasily from foot to foot.

"Paraselene was a born traitor. Skyfire was no true Decepticon. He hated what he was doing. This creature he has raised however... He is not a scientist. He is not stupid, like the Seeker Consort, or indecisive, like the brother. Already they speak of him with awe. He may be of more danger to us than Megatron." A pause. "But what am I to know? I am only a guardian, and politics is not my place."

"Thank you Prowl."

_Prowl...?_ thought Prime, then he was propelled into squealing light and an alarm flickering overhead and Ratchet's, "He's out, he's out..."

#

Ratchet handed over a cup of weak liquid energon mixed with something much stronger. Prime drank it slowly. The foil blanket over his shoulders cast little sparkle-lights on the walls.

Perceptor lay nearby, still in stasis.

"He used his caste codes. He was an Alpha. He managed to find a way through." Prime's vocalisers were scratched and raw. He sipped the infusion gingerly.

"Alpha Trion put a great many logic gates on your re-birthing memory. He didn't want you remembering."

"You remembered."

"Slaggit Optimus, I was _there_. The slagging stuff he did to Orion - I'd rather forget, you know? I was meant to save lives, not destroy them..." He climbed off his seat, paced the floor before leaning on his lab table, tried to catch a breath.

"You were there?" Prime was dumbfounded. He knew that Ratchet had been active in the time before his birth, had held status on the Autobot Council. But he'd never told him how involved he'd been with Prime's making.

"They kept me close by. My instructions were to keep Orion's body alive so they could grow the Matrix into him. I wanted to put him in stasis, stop the pain but - the Matrix of Leadership - it was too important to them."

Ratchet gulped a breath, optics drowning in bad-memory blue. "They sung to him, day and night. Sung to the Matrix, the most beautiful songs. Forbidden songs. He didn't know what was happening, this simple, kind 'bot who'd never hurt anyone in his life, and they were torturing him as they sung to him and he didn't understand. Sometimes he called for me, and I never came. _I never came_."

"Oh Ratchet," Prime breathed.

When Ratchet returned to him his face shone with a hard, cold light.

"I hated you. You weren't even alive yet but I had such a loathing for you. I hated the Autobot High Command for what they had to do to save us all. And I hated the Prime Consort for betraying Orion, tricking him into the Celestial Temple so they could kill him."

_Seeker Consort._ Prime pulled the thermal-foil tighter around him. It worried him having Ratchet so upset. He'd always been so stable, a constant throughout his life. Never like this.

"Prime Consort..."

"You were a Reborn, and the War destroyed most of the old ways. Nova Prime was bonded to a mech of the highest rank and leadership ability. It was an arranged pairing, like they all have been. No Prime has ever bonded for love, not one of them." Ratchet sounded offhand, as if his emotional outburst had drained him. "A Prime Consort was expected to lead the Autobot Army, expected to be the bodyguard and adviser. Eventually, they were expected to bud the Prime Spark, the next generation of Prime. This was never left to chance."

Nearby, Perceptor moaned as he slowly climbed out of his stasis coma.

Prime felt a hazy unreality, as if his existence was less planned and more like a dreadful mistake. "No Prime was sparked. Something went wrong...?"

"Yes. Perhaps they waited too long in agreeing over a suitable candidate. Maybe they tried to breed the Warriormech standard back into the Prime line too quickly. Nova's Consort was Cybertronian of the highest order. A God Soldier. I know enough about hereditary patterns. That was far too ambitions a pairing to hope for. The God Soldier caste was a dead, barren race, even then."

_A God Soldier._ Flash of Starscream's face before overload, before he'd lost his optics. Such a challenge in him, such a sense of entitlement. He was in his element. Never for him the awestruck feelings that would come with bedding a Prime.

"Did you ever meet him? The Prime Consort?"

"Stop it," said Ratchet. "I know what you're doing, trying to find a parallel between yourself and Starscream."

"Oh - so there is a parallel," Prime stood up, began to follow him around. "There's a parallel."

"Primus slaggit, you've seen the etchings. That Celestial Temple is a Mausoleum to a dead race. You know what Starscream looks like. He's some reduced little mech with a God Soldier's face, and you think he could have any equivalence to the real thing? Prime, Consort Paraselene was magnificent, he stood nearly as tall as you, a killing machine, a true Warriormech. The Decepticons deal in their pitiful remnants, but they are nothing in comparison."

Prime saw the distress, knew there was something in his old friend's face that shouldn't have been there. "You knew them as more than etchings."

"More than one died under my care." The medic in him was stoic, but the mech was not. "Straxus instigated genocide on a whole caste in order to assure his victory back in the Great War. Less than a handful survived. These were the attendants of Primus. Revered beyond worship and they were all dead. It was like watching our whole culture die."

"They never taught us why the God Soldiers disappeared."

"It was our greatest defeat. Later we discovered evidence of a mechanical nanoparticle, a metal viroid engineered to kill only God Soldiers. Skyfire - the science-mech you speak of, he made that virus."

Prime tried to find word of support and could not. This was a more than a personal ache, but the loss of a racial identity. Ratchet stuffed some tools into an alcohol bath and went to attend to Perceptor, who was starting to mumble and stir.

"This mech is evil. You don't want to go looking for him Prime...you just don't."

#

Perceptor was still groggy from the coma. Feeling responsible, Prime didn't approach him until Wheeljack had stayed with him a while, and they had spoken.

"He's good," said Wheeljack with a friendly blue ear-flash. "He wants to talk, which is always an encouraging sign."

Prime approached Perceptor, shy and awkward. "'Jack...what happened between us was not - I mean, you two..."

Wheeljack was smiling under his mask. "Oh Prime, it was an honour. For him. And for me. You choose so few partners."

Not the first time he'd had that reaction, and it irritated him. He watched Wheeljack go.

Perceptor noticed his expression, said, "'Jack's an understanding 'bot."

"Hmm."

"You'd rather he be jealous?"

"I would rather mechs saw me as something more than a walking relic."

"Might have to go out of the Autobot ranks for that." Perceptor could be sly, even when he was half under stasis.

"I did and it was..." and he spoke a word in a language he'd never known, a word that belonged in no Autobot tongue.

"How about that," Perceptor said. "You picked up some Decepticon off me."

Prime hesitated, then blurted, "You saw the dark place, that place in my past?"

Yes." Perceptor's optics flickered. "I knew you were reborn but I didn't realise it had quite been so brutal."

"I still don't remember. Just flashes. Alpha Trion worked hard to erase Orion's memory."

"Some of it's still in there. Exoskeletal memory is an inexact and ill-researched discipline."

"The conversation about Skyfire. You remember that?"

Perceptor nodded. "Star wouldn't have given us that name if he wasn't going to be useful. Skyfire raised Starscream from a spark-child, and raised him away from the Decepticons for a time. I don't think he's dead. Skyfire might be missing, but he's still alive. We've been charged to find him."

"Percy," Prime started, cautiously.

"Yeah?"

"He's not a good...I mean, Ratchet knew Skyfire, or knew of him."

Perceptor was guarded. "And?"

"He's...he's a monster, Perceptor. He was involved in all the Decepticon atrocities in the time of Straxus. Ratchet's certain we have to leave him buried."

"Titan."

"Excuse me?"

Perceptor slid himself upright. "We have to get there. That's where Skyfire is. Starscream was never interested in any place in this solar system, hardly bothered to know the name of other planets other than this one. But he knew the human name of a gas-giant moon? That place was significant to him. Something happened there, something important."

#

Solarstar woke up to soft murmurs and dismissals. He heard the language of his birth, heard _no, no, it's not true._

He glanced over to where his client was recharging by his side, passed out from too much smoked energon. A good thing he wasn't hearing his racket. Senator Guar had something of a nervous disposition. Couldn't bear great emotional outbursts. Would probably not come back if he was unduly stressed.

Delicate as gold leaf in an ion wind, Solar rose from the berth and padded towards his antechamber. Crossight was on his knees, trying to hush the fevered mech as best he could.

"Cross, if the Senator hears him, I'm as good as dropped."

"His eyes, they pain him," Cross replied. "He needs energon to help with the pain."

Solarstar threw up his hands in an annoyed gesture. "What he needs to do is work. We're all starving here." Solar shook his head, then stopped as the violet optics came online, looked at him with loathing. The eyes of the God Soldier.

"You hear me, Starscream? You need to work. And you'll get no work if you're too ruined to even look at."

He had self-repaired over the time spent here, rerouted speech circuits. The words came out like metal shavings over serrated metal. "Rust you. Slagging whore." Energon depletion had exhausted him. He could not say much more.

Solarstar patted him on the arm, and exchanged glances with Crossfire. What was he supposed to do? Having to care for Aster...no..._Starscream_ it was now, having to be responsible for him was more a distraction than he needed from his life of mass sharing and petty conversation with rich, old Autobots.

It was Tesselax's idea to give him eyes. Tesselax would have happily let _Aster_ die, but Megatron's orders had been explicit. He had to be kept alive.

"You've been damaged. There is nothing attractive in you," Tesselax said to him via Solarstar. "Nothing that I could sell. I'd make you gladiator fodder but I'm beholden to your brute of a Master."

Solarstar had then wondered where Aster had developed such a haughty bearing. He had been abused over a long period. Fresh weals over old scars. Perhaps he had not always been ugly. Perhaps he'd looked like Paraselene had when he was whole and alive, but now they were both a pair of damaged liabilities in Tesselax's care.

Much as Tesselax loved his treasures, he was mercenary enough to know that the carapace of a God Soldier was not going to keep him in energon. He'd procured the services of a back-conduit Thaumaturge, a specialised medic. Got him to dig the unseeing eyes out of Paraselene and transplant them into his new arrival. Megatron had only said not to kill him, not to adjust some of the damage.

The Thaumaturge's hands had shaken from Goldtail addiction. A voice that once could sing exoskeletal nanites into protoflesh had all but decayed. Too much smoked energon, powdered Goldtail. Tesselax murmured blithe promises of procuring that rare isotope, pushed the tools into the Thaumaturge's hands. "I need eyes on one of my slaves. I need him to not scare the clients."

Dead Paraselene had mocked them from his quartz prison, his face a sneer of royal prerogative. The Thaumaturge had sneered back. He was old enough to remember God Soldiers in the flesh, remembered their arrogance, the way they would never acknowledge any 'bot lower than an Alpha. Remembered this particular individual when he was alive, so proud and arrogant. "You realise that this design hasn't existed in a Cybertronian mech since before the Great War. I want to be paid whether or not his sight is restored."

Of course the Thaumaturge had no reason to believe that anything could be salvaged from the God Soldier's corpse. He knew that there was nothing alive that was compatible to these relics of the Primus Age.

Paraselene had the advantage of death. There was no more energon to intoxicate Aster, and the addicted medic dropped his laser-scalpel twice, scoring parallel wounds on Aster's right cheek. They cauterised instantly, but even Solarstar winced. Frozen by the stasis girdle, voiceless and enraged, all that existed of Aster was the hate cyberemones leaching out of him. He was a fighter, thought Solarstar, a true Decepticon. An atavistic sense of respect flowered in Solarstar's enslaved spark.

The optics fit perfectly.

Even the Thaumaturge was amazed. The violet light, the stink of hate, golden apertures narrowing to pinpricks...these were God Soldier cues. He gasped, pulled back, made the mark of Primus on his chest.

Solarstar released the girdle slightly, and Aster bolted. Not for the door, but the shiny chrome of a wall. He looked into it, looked at his face, and let out a wail of despair.

_So,_ thought Solar, _you were beautiful once. But whatever attractiveness you had has been beaten out of you._

The eye sockets could not completely be repaired. He would still be crying silver-scars. His mouth would always be crooked, and now the cauterising burns were gracing his broken cheek.

He drove his clenched fist into the metal surface, so quickly that Solarstar didn't have time to activate the stasis girdle. Aster's ruined reflection caved in under the force of the blow.

"Watch him, my dear," said Tesselax coolly. "I don't want him ruining the ambience."

Tesselax and the Thaumaturge left, and Aster turned, slumped against the wall. For the first time he wasn't arch and frosty, as if he were nobler than all the Senators Solarstar coupled with. Solarstar narrowed his optics, wondered where in this he would find his advantage.

"You expected to see differently?"

"I was told differently." He covered his face with his hands. "I was lied to, made to believe I was not..."

"Aster-"

"Don't call me that," the mech snapped, pulling his hands down. The vulnerable moment had passed. He had hardened up, returned to his hateful self. "It's not my name!"

"So what is your name, if your identity needs to be kept hidden so preciously?"

Aster only turned aside. The leaking protoflesh around his sutures made his face gleam in the cold half-lights.

"Aster, or whoever you are, let me tell you about surviving here. Letting go of your illusions will assist you in more ways than one. You are not beautiful. But you can see now, and you can give pleasure. Perhaps we could organise a veil. Add mystery."

"Am I ugly?" he asked suddenly.

He'd couched the question in hate-speech. There was nothing else but to be direct.

"Yes," said Solarstar.

He exhaled. The optics flickered as an emotion was experienced and experienced painfully.

"You were not so, once?" Solarstar had been a Decepticon long enough before his capture to know what was most important to them.

A small shrug of surrender. He was or he wasn't, it meant little now. Decepticons didn't dwell on their past.

"You have to be strong," Solarstar continued in the language that allowed no empathy. "Be what you were born to be." He pushed his shoulder forward, showed the pale violet marks of his people. "I was a Decepticon, too."

Aster leaned close, saw, and stared up at Solarstar. Hope or horror? He couldn't really tell with those new optics of his.

"My name is Starscream," Aster said with a fierce whisper. "That's my real name."

"Starscream? We had a leader by that name once."

The optics flared with a cold violet light, and Solar had sat back as a revelation washed over him.

"Oh Straxus. Oh my dark..."

"I am a prisoner. Megatron has kept me alive and had Tesselax imprison me, as he has little power and cannot do it himself."

"Starscream..." Solarstar breathed the name, remembered a Prime's shout.

"You have to help me."

"I can't." Solarstar shook his head. "The girdle you wear will prevent me from any process or logic path that might lead to freedom. Mine, or any other slave under Tesselax's care."

Starscream lunged forward with a hiss. "You put this on me!"

"I do what I have to do! To stay alive! To have an existence beyond that of a slave! Mighty Starscream, Decepticon Leader, how could you comprehend what it is to live every day beholden to the whims of another..."

"I lived under Megatron! I lived under..." He stopped, clenched his fists, his jaws, let out a groan of anguish. "Don't presume to think that I don't know what it's like."

Solarstar slid back. "You could have flown away, any time you wanted. You didn't have to stay."

So tonight his realities had caught up to him, along with a nanite infection from Tesselax's dirty tools. Feverish, Starscream mumbled words to an invisible companion. Solarstar strained his audios at the unfamiliar language. An alien language, unspoken by Cybertronians of any caste.

_Was this the one Optimus Prime called to? You had thought the Prime would be lovesick over a great beauty, some unbearably majestic creature, and yet here was something not that at all. Amazing._

"He'll lose those eyes," said Crossight, "If he doesn't have energy to fight off the invading nanites. We might lose him, too."

Solarstar pressed his mouth together, wished for a natural disaster to come crashing around him, rid him of this trouble. It wasn't as if there weren't enough busted-up 'cons around. Why should this one be any more important? He had given up his Decepticon heritage with his freedom.

But the faded triangle-glyphs on his wings tingled, and his processors had awoken with the magical words of his people's language. Hard to reconcile the Starscream of legend with this mech that sweated and groaned in his chambers, but impossible to deny.

He pulled out a glory box of solid Cybertronium that sat on the far end of his berth. The lid was inlaid with a mosaic of plutonium and gold, and the pressurized vessel opened with a hiss. White energon gleamed back at him.

Solarstar gazed at the shifting light, and a strange, heady excitement filled him.

_I am more than a slave. I am a Decepticon._

###


	20. Decisions

twenty: Decisions

#

#

#

"Technically, it's not stealing, because it's ours. We gave them those designs. We told them how to build that ship."

Perceptor still had desert grime on him, a vile shade of a storm-morning orange. He stumbled through the pack of journalists, oblivious to the camera lenses that captured him like this, a crazy 'bot talking nonsense. Dust-motes danced on his shoulders, attracted by static electricity and obsession. "The plans? The zero-point energy thrusters? All ours. The console circuits were lifted straight out of the Ark."

Prime carefully toed aside a suicidal photographer who had gotten under Perceptor's knees for a prize-winning shot.

"You're talking about a two-month journey. I can't afford to lose anyone for half a solar year."

"So you're giving up on him?"

Prime was going to reply, then stopped. Little point in talking with Perceptor like this. He was clued up to emotional blackmail.

Perceptor purposefully stood in Prime's way, made Prime stop to shuffle past him. There were too many humans under his feet to manoeuvre comfortably. One of them dropped a camera and swore loudly in Spanish.

"The journey would only be long if you were soft-bodied and couldn't handle acceleration. Those thrusters could hit near-light within an hour. If we took one of the heavy-lifters, we'd be there in under a week. Days even."

"I'm not going to endanger our welcome by stealing their spacecraft even-"

"-but Prime-"

"-even if it does belong to us. We gave that technology as a gift. We don't take it off them. What opinion do you think the humans will have of us, if they see us flying off in a machine they built?"

Perceptor followed Prime down the corridor like a broken satellite. The gaggle of journalists running behind them would have only heard the chime of Standard-Autobot dialect, but Prime was still uncomfortable in talking about such seditious things around the newly informed human media.

"I thought of that..."

Prime turned on Perceptor and hissed, "_Haven't you had enough of thinking?_"

One of the visitors glanced sideways at them. Prime withdrew. Perceptor put his hand on Prime's shoulder, hesitantly.

"There is a way. To borrow the heavy-lifter for a time and the humans wouldn't know."

"Wheeljack?" sighed Prime, waiting for Perceptor to tell of yet another invention, some foolishly convoluted thing.

"No." Perceptor heaved a breath and blurted, "Mirage. He could make the whole ship invisible, put a holo in its place..."

Even the photographers must have felt the room temperature flux. The whirrs and clicks stopped.

Prime walked away.

The journalists followed him. They were a much younger and fitter group than the batch of snowy-haired reporters the media had initially sent, back when the story of their extraterrestrial visitors was being gently spoon-fed to the Earth population.

Then, the humans had been easy to avoid. Now he had to be rude, duck into a room, slide the blast doors shut so he could lower his battle mask and press a hand over him mouth lest he shrieked in some atavistic, organic horror at the name.

_Mirage._

His people had all been careful to keep the blue Alpha away from him. More than once he'd turned the corner and into a gaping silence, as if his progress was being monitored. To think of Mirage was to re-live that tearing feeling in his chest, that fist-punch of panic. It was all he could do just to wrap his arms around his chest, as if the Matrix was going to fall out of him, or worse, reach critical mass and explode.

His knees buckled. He sought purchase against a wall and sunk into the corner. What would they say now, if they saw him, all those Elders of Iacon? They'd built him to be a warrior and here he was, crushed under the weight of his own spark. Everything in him seemed to be etched in pain, all the dead-body parts that made him. Even his first spark-lover had called him _Monster_, and not as a term of endearment, either.

The Elders had made him their Warrior Prime when no Prime had fought, ever; had constructed him like a junkyard golem out of all that was hated and unholy. There was nothing in him that could process love. He could have more easily halved zero, counted the number of stars in the universe.

Perceptor remained at the door. Prime could hear his plaintive internal-comms, pleas for him to open up, to let him in.

_But I've already let you in too far._

"Prime, I know this is hard for you. But Starscream was my friend too."

His fingers clawed into his exoskeleton. _Friend._ Starscream and him...they had never been friends. Prime stood up, hauled open the door. He could see his wild stare reflected off the mirror-reflection of Perceptor's cheek - Perceptor took a step back.

"Do what you have to do," Prime growled. "But I don't want to talk to Mirage. I don't want to look at him, or hear his voice. He's nothing to me, you understand?"

"Yes," said Perceptor with an exultant nod. "We'll find this Skyfire, and we'll get some answers."

Prime shoved the dusty mech aside, not sure how long he could be stoic with this storm inside him. "You go find him yourself. Satisfy your curiosity. This is your obsession. I don't want to know."

#

Dead End was humming tonight, a discordant echo through the conduits and corridors. A silver-night, the mass-blood moon. Already a mech had died a few levels up, killed in a brief and brutal energon riot. Not so far below the dark-mechs of the deep pits keened their prayers of redemption and fear. Dark and wounded Primus, god of the sun-side and the void-side, god in his endless torment. The Oracles were out in force. Their songs were wrought from the pain of foresight, they cried of the coming time when the two halves of Cybertron would be reunited, and the halls whispered, _Megatron. Megatron comes to unite us_.

Starscream stayed in the shadows while Solar attended to an Autobot client. Tesselax had sent the client for _Aster_, a semi-lord who had a predilection for wounded things. Solarstar had waylaid him, taken him behind the iridium veil to his berth.

"But I thought there was a new Decepticon," the client had whined, "Tesselax said there was a prisoner he had captured from a battle." Lewd whisper. "A ruined creature."

"Only me," Solarstar had cajoled, "and you will receive no greater honour."

In the near-dark Starscream waited for Solar to finish. He listened to the desultory and loveless grunts of bodysex, actions that had been meant for him. The client's protomass had a slight luminescence, and a spill highlighted the straining curve of Solar's thigh.

_"You don't need to do this,"_ Starscream had said when Solarstar had first taken on a client meant for him.

"I do," Solar had replied, his narrow Decepticon face almost regal in its iciness. He reminded Starscream so much of Blitzwing. Starscream wondered if they shared the same maker, or came from similar design stock. It would not be so far fetched - Blitz's designer-donor had been a famed Alpha Oracle.

"Megatron has sent you here to be humiliated and debased. He intends to break your spirit and your name if he cannot break your spark."

"I will escape."

"Not while wearing a stasis device. Even if you stayed within the Arrondissement borders, Tesselax would tear Dead End apart looking for you. But whatever you need, I can bring to you."

Bring to him? He could think of many things. Megatron's head on a plate. Senator Xaaron's too, for that matter, and a dozen Autobots he could name, starting with Mirage.

_But could he bring that voice in the dark, the voice in a time of blindness? No face. No hated Autobot logo. Only voice and touch and pleasure-pain and a sonographed body without detail. Only hot transmuted flesh inside him, the tidal ebb and surge of mass in his pelvis, yearning song in crushing darkness, his own overload._

The rare moon was sparking off memories in him tonight.

"Do you need to get a message out to someone, maybe?" Solarstar had said, early in the twilight that sufficed for a day here.

"A message?" Starscream had not yet gained enough control over the God Soldier's transplanted eyes to dim down the hopeless flash.

_Optimus...?_

He'd looked at Solarstar, and Crossight, on both of them the triangular mark of the Decepticon brand. Even in his short time here more mechs had come to him, not for sex, not to gloat, but to whisper their allegiances. To the Decepticon cause. To him. "_Save us_," they said. _"We are hungry. We are scared._ _Come back to us_..."

For so long he'd been beholden to others - at last he was slipping back into the mantle of leadership and he'd missed it fiercely. Missed that respect. Missed being important for right reasons and not wrong ones.

"If there are Decepticons of I can still trust, please find them. Not neutrals won over, but full-ranking soldiers. I need to let them know I'm still alive."

"I will find them."

"Your loyalty will not go unrewarded," Starscream had murmured. He'd made his decision.

_But why does it hurt so?_

All through Solar's act Starscream pressed his knees together to ease the ghost-ache between his legs, rubbed clenched fists along his thighs until the colour nanites peeled away.

He heard a mumbled phrase in Autobot tongue, something Optimus often sighed on the final breath of overload, but - lost to his own pleasure - Starscream had never bothered to ask. There had never been easy intimacies between them.

Confusion had come to rule in the languid atmosphere of Tesselax's chambers. He should have felt gladness and relief in being spared a prostitute's dishonour, but his bodyflesh only remembered physicality, not emotional finesse.

In boredom and agitation he let out staccato hums and scraps of songs, those crooning Autobot rhythms once sung inside him. He felt the echo of arousal and bit down in anger and shame at how easily he fell into craving and weakness. His borrowed eyes were restless. In a spear of incidental moonlight the client's indigo shoulder was turned Primus-red, the sacred colour.

Prime's colour.

Starscream's first sight of Optimus Prime had been one of hate, his sight futzing with hunger. His floor-level point of view made the transformed Prime distorted and hideous.

He knew it was only wartime propaganda, disinformation, but the stories of Prime were nightmare stories, how the Autobot Council had raised a creature from the dead, reanimated him for the purpose of defeating Megatron.

Starscream had seen him in battle often enough, that massive body scarred and pitted from combat. Had seen enough to give credence to that cobble of fact and rumour, that under the Prime's mask was nothing but decay and revulsion. They'd said that under his corroded exoskeleton his protoflesh was slimed with dead nanites. They said that his touch would like being scored with acid and poison waste.

It seemed so long ago when he had first bared his flesh to the Autobot Leader's cathode-blue eyes, exposed himself in a single, shrill climax of debasement.

_Take what you want!_

Cast out from his people, hunger cannibalizing his internals, about to be interrogated and tortured...if he could not end his life in glory, then it would be done in an epic catastrophe, a horror that would be spoken of only in whispers. He would not allow his death to be a mere footnote.

But Prime hadn't taken him, and Starscream remembered that flooding relief. And was so grateful _(grateful!)_ towards his captor for that he forgot to hate, for a little while.

He had always held the upper hand in matters of mass sharing and physical conquest, always. He'd always had choice. Knew when Prime invited him to his quarters that he intended Starscream to service him, slave to warlord.

His fears built and built. What the protomass of a dead thing be like? Would it ooze out of him like stinking pitch? Would it burn him like acid?

The night he had first straddled Prime's battle-scarred body, felt the breathless weight of protomass unfolding inside him, all he could think of were the horror stories of the _living corpse_, of taking that reanimated decay into himself. Sick with revulsion he'd _fucked_ their rotted leader in the slave position, wanted to cry out from the awfulness of it. He'd tried to pull his mind out of what he was doing, tried to think of a good-looking mech he'd won to his berth, or of the triumph he normally felt at having seduced a Senator, but all those things were swept away with the raw truth of what he was doing now. For a second he even though that any discipline by Megatron wouldn't be worse than this.

Prime just stared at him throughout the ordeal. Just stared out from that chipped battlemask. Starscream thought of what was underneath that corroded shield, and his energy-lines kinked with nausea.

Another thought had come, even worse than the act of mass sharing.

What if Prime wanted to kiss him?

Prime's fingers had crawled up from Starscream's hip to his waist. Starscream had reacted in fear, slapped that creeping hand away. He faced the wall, thinking that any second now he would be punched into submission, that Prime would drag him down, lower his mask and make Starscream press his mouth to a diseased maw...

_Straxus, please don't let that happen, death would be better than that..._

But the awful thing had not happened. Starscream had kept going until he felt the spill of liquid flesh inside him. Almost numb to disgust by then, his circuits having said - *enough* - he couldn't wait to pull himself off. The transmuted mass was dripping down his thighs, black as tar, not silver bright at all, (Corruption, pollution he'd thought at first. Only later would he know how wrong he was.)

He had returned to his berth afterwards, scrubbed his exoskeleton raw.

But and but. Once the feeling passed, Starscream had reassessed. That exoskeleton had not quite been as spoiled as he thought it would be, no leaking of fluids through crevices, no ossification of age. He had not smelt decay, only clean, sun-scored metal and blue energon.

The spill had not been corruption but massblood, protomass not entirely transformed.

Which meant...

Post-recharge he had stood at the doorway, watched Prime gingerly moving about his berth. It was as if his view of the world had twisted ever so slightly off kilter. Almost didn't believe what he was seeing - Megatron's nemesis, scourge of the Decepticons, struggling with the first spill of mass-blood like a protoform who didn't know what to do with himself.

_Straxus, it wasn't pollution...it was his first time._

An experienced lover would have helped a virginal partner clean up the massblood immediately after their conjugal pairing. Would have coaxed a second overload, so that he spent silver-clean and not have woken in pain later. Wouldn't have left him alone to dry soiled and stained.

Starscream had always prided himself on his skill. He'd thought of those lovers who had sung his praises, who'd said his name with sighs and songs. His couplings with them had all been politically motivated, a step towards power. But they'd all been older, experienced. He had little to do with young mechs.

Watching Prime he'd felt almost..._wounded_ with pity, and shame, and he hated those weak feelings, hated Prime, who made him weak, and who still treated him with kindness afterwards.

_He is a Prime, he carries the spark of Primus, and he has had no other but you._

Hate and horror and disgust and something else flowered in Starscream, and he couldn't give that feeling a name, even as Perceptor said, "Don't try to hide it from him," but Starscream didn't know what _it_ was, apart from a shuddery excitement every time Prime was near him, like he was scared and thrilled at the same time.

He had been careful in previous erotic campaigns. Not allowed himself to feel. His overloads - if one could even call the cessation of urgency that - had been rare, little more than a punctuation to a carefully orchestrated physical conversation. He never lost control.

But with Optimus Prime...

With Prime he had trembled under kisses, and had been made weaker. Had surrendered to Prime's hot mouth and hotter mass, spread his legs and begged like a common Dead End harlot for him.

Prime had been so clumsy and new to bodysex. But Starscream had never climaxed with anyone the way he did when the Autobot leader was on his knees before him, the sacred corrugations of the Prime-shield on his forehead brushing against Starscream's belly as Prime's jaw and lips worked in his flesh. Exultation on overload, the silver-splashes on Prime's chin and chest, his name moaned in an Autobot accent so strong that it sounded like an another's name.

"I hate you," he'd moaned in Decepticon as Prime's mouth found his intimate places, "I hate you, oh more...please more..."

No reason in the way his sub-atomic spaces had been invaded, the way his body had shaken and he had clung to Prime, and how he'd stumbled into a foreign sensation, an experiential territory that he'd never before entered and it filled him with such fear, and he didn't know the word for it, and Perceptor had told him a human word, _love_, and he didn't even know that there could be a word for this thing so frightening and new.

He dared not tell Prime. Such a thing could be extinguished so easily. Even taught the human child the raw agony of a Decepticon prayer: _my processors are burned black/my spark aches/not to be near you/like a wall you are to me/a fortress impenetrable/but the time will come when I will conquer you/you will kneel before me and all shall know/what is mine yours/yours, mine/our sparks will be one/I will be victorious_...

Even in joy it had all gone wrong.

His winglets, now nearly the span of his upper arms, ached. He remembered them small and new, his dark-lover's kisses, and groaned aloud.

The dark-memory lover was not Prime, not really, now that he'd had time to think about it. There was great deal of sitting around in Tesselax's harem, a lot of time to ponder and think. Some temporal anomaly, some dying dream of returning to his captors with his wings gone and his body wracked and broken. That lover was nameless, and now that his sight had been returned, functionally dead.

The client shouted in overload. The smell of spilt bodymass filled the chamber. The moonlight passed and the memory faded.

#

Solarstar leant over him with a hiss. "He's gone. You have visitors."

Starscream woke up with a jolt. He was still startled by sight, the faint violet reflections against shining surfaces, or in near dark. He could feel Dead End press in around him, remembered where he was.

Not much was left of the client, save for silvering patches on the memory-foam of Solarstar's berth, like smeared, accidental chrome. Crossight was already cleaning up. Tesselax had been and gone, hulking figure, half-blind in darkness, his way lit by a bio-globe, a glass sphere of light-emitting nanites to replace the ones fading from his eyes.

Tonight there were shadows in the doorway, quick voices in Decepticon. Starscream pulled himself upright.

He recognised his two soldiers. Swindle, his golden re-born, and the grey-exoskeleton of the triple-changer Octane. They had on them the titanium-woven robes of Pit priests, camouflage worn against Autobot patrol sentinels doing a random identity sweep. Not even automatons were being excluded from sweeps now. Even a vehicle could be a mech in disguise.

"Is it really you?" whispered the reborn soldier. "We've heard rumours from neutrals, but Megatron said that the Autobots had killed you."

Starscream stepped into a puddle of light. The quarters were cramped with so many of them, the harsh fug of bodysex, his own unhealed injuries, the energon payment Solarstar's client had left behind. "I am alive," he said. Exultation made his conduits glow. "I am alive."

Octane dropped to one knee, gave a quick bow before rising. Swindle followed suit. Then the reborn pulled him into a hug.

"My Lord, we sung songs for you. We wished for your safe passage to rebirth. This has been a difficult time for us. Megatron aspires to Decepticon glory, but he will kill us all to achieve it. With you around...we were at least assured of survival."

It had been a difficult speech for Octane to make. For a Decepticon _glory_ was itself a noble cause. Worth dying for - a remnant of their gladiatorial origins. But to self-destruct with nothing to show for it? Akin to suicide. That could not happen. He was needed now, and they had come to him, seeking a Leader, validating a position that Megatron so often belittled and dismissed.

"He must not plan any attack on the Autobots now. It's the wrong time. They are at full strength."

Octane dropped his voice, used their most secret language, the one even spies would not be able to translate. "He's been busy with recruitment. The Autobot High Command have never been able to match him for pulling Neutrals to our cause. The current energon restrictions make them receptive to flattery and promises." He paused. "Also our spies send word. The Matrix of Leadership is about to be reappropriated."

"Reappropriated?" Starscream asked, and something seemed to clench inside him.

"Reappropriated. They will take the spark and Matrix out of their living host and install it in the Temple. Make the Temple the Celestial Prime. A city, not one individual. The Reliquary of Primus. His sacred bloodline is truly dead now, and the Autobots wish to preserve what is left of him..."

"Meaning the Prime individual will die."

"Yes. Megatron will be unopposed and take his chances with the Autobot army. They will fight to defend the Matrix, but once that is destroyed...their resolve will crumble."

Starscream stood up, needed to move, needed to do something other than stare at Octane slack jawed and in shock.

"This Reappropriation...is it common knowledge among the Autobots?"

"I'm certain. Their Prime will have known by now, if he'd not dead already." Octane gave a half-laugh, amazed at the fortuitous turn of events. "Their Corpse-Prime - dead! How long have we waited for this moment, and it's come. It's come!"

Something must have slipped in the careful stillness of Starscream's face. Octane frowned.

"Surely this must be a vindication, knowing that your captor is about to be destroyed."

His captor. The Prime of his sight.

Tonight Starscream looked at Octane, calm as the Lake of the Wound. "Yes, it is a vindication."

"You must have suffered." Swindle said quietly. Starscream saw them exchange looks. They would imagine him to have suffered beyond humiliation.

"I have suffered under him and Megatron both."

"He has not been able to destroy your legacy, Starscream. Your courage, your dedication to life is still spoken of as a testament to your survival. You endured tortures at the Autobot hands of such an unspeakable magnitude and humiliation and still have continued to live."

Starscream nodded. His protoflesh ossified inside him. He became as cool and lifeless as the statue at the shrine of Decimus.

_Contain your emotions. Seal them away. Your brief interludes and body-pleasures you succumbed to, as a method of survival. It hasn't damaged your standing among your people - the Autobots may think you a whore, but you're a hero to your people._

There were things he had learnt in all the time under Megatron's tutelage. He knew how to make himself a stone, to not think, not feel beyond what was necessary.

"Find out who is loyal to us. Don't tell them yet that I'm alive or where I am. Soon we will have to take action."

"When will that be?" Octane asked. "We're demoralised enough as it is."

Take a deep breath. Show nothing. "When the Prime Spark is installed in the Temple. Megatron is right to say they are vulnerable then, but how much...we have yet to know. Return in two mega-cycles and tell me our numbers. Then we will plan."

Their stay was brief. His soldiers replaced their disguises and left him, and Starscream stood in the centre of the chamber as his world was destroyed and rebuilt around him. A leader once more. But just that.

Solarstar sidled up alongside Starscream, the last of the lubricant polished from his exoskeleton. A veil of woven metal fell from his shoulders, so sheer it was almost transparent.

"I know them," said Solarstar, jutting his chin towards the chamber's portcullis. "I have heard that they are great warriors."

"The best," murmured Starscream.

"Then why do you lie to them?"

Starscream glanced at Solarstar. The smaller Decepticon pretended nonchalance, brushed at a non-existent smear on his shoulder.

"I know you are lying. You lie about your relationship with the Autobot Prime." Crooked little grin.

"I was what I had to be to endure," Starscream's optics flared. "I was his prisoner, and that is all."

In the far depths the Oracles began singing. Their voices rose in harmony only once before falling into discord. Solar's crimson optics darkened. "I have had his mass inside me, I've heard him scream your name on overload. And I can see by your face that you want to kill me now, out of jealousy and possessiveness." The veil shimmered. "I know why. His obsession was not that of a master over a slave. You were his lover...and more if I can guess right. You're no born voluptuary. Bodysex itself holds little appeal for you. If you were with him, then you loved him, and he loved you."

Solar's optics trailed crimson highlights over Starscream's enraged face.

"Why do you think Tesselax demands such a high price for me? The Prime came to us just before the last blood moon. I was given to him as a gift." Solarstar tipped his head to one side, thinking. "I know the stories. Of his origins, a corpse drawn from the River of Primus' Blood. I saw he was maddened with longing. That can be dangerous in a client. I feared that. I thought to myself - whoever has inflicted such a wound on him, has wounded him deeply. I feared punishment, perhaps, the reprimand of a scorned lover." Solar circled Starscream. "Your wings - they are regrown? You would have been more injured than you are now. Were you not able to be with him?"

"No...yes." Starscream returned to his berth, to the shadows. "And still."

"Still?"

"I am a leader, Solar. I am _needed_. But with him...among the Autobots - I would not be that. I would be less than _nothing_. I can't be in that place." He did not intend the words to come out so raw. It was a statement of fact. It was as if he was bleeding truth, and bleeding out with it. He looked around him and let out a razor-edged laugh. "And here I am in this brothel, just as they said should be."

"But why did they treat you so? With him you would be...you would be Prime Consort."

"Prime Consort." Starscream laughed again, a metal-on-metal sound. "The title holds little meaning now. You heard Octane. They intend to tear the Matrix of Leadership out of him. The position itself holds no respect. He could protect me no more than he can protect himself." He lay back, looked up past the veils and hangings of the chamber. A stray searchlight licked the chamber's high lip like a lover.

"Did you ever see his face?"

"Yes," breathed Starscream. "Once or twice."

"And you did not flee such ugliness?"

In the dark Starscream gripped the foam until his hands hurt. "No I did not."

Solar gave a half-smile. The searchlight reflections caught his cheek. "Then even though you refuse to have anything to do with him, I doubt he is finished with you."

"He will be," Starscream hissed from the darkness. "He will be finished with me. Megatron has made sure of it."

#

They were the strange hours, a human had said to Prime once, that day-quarter between midnight and sunrise. There was something in human biology that still didn't process those dark hours properly, after a hundred thousand years of evolution had made them shun the darkness, not even when a dozen generations of electric light made a nocturnal existence possible.

_"There's still that feeling that anything can happen."_ said a thirteen year old Spike early on in their visitation, in that innocent time when everything seemed so full of promise, new planet and Cybertron looking as it were on the brink of a second Golden Age.

Prime thought of this when his recharge was interrupted, and Jazz stood at the doorway, strip-lights reflecting off his visor, and agitation radiating from him.

"I thought you'd gone," said Prime.

Jazz paused. The Ark was quiet. Even the Earth seemed quiet, the continual tectonic mutter through the Ark's buried frame hushed for a moment, as if waiting for a command to continue, to resume, a planetary engine on idle.

"We're leaving in an hour. Prime..."

And Prime in all his sensitivity to his people's condition, that sense that had made him a leader above all others, knew that a terrible knowledge was about to be revealed to him. The Falling Man's face, his eternal sadness, seemed to echo in Jazz's face.

"Talk to me."

"The order came through on the Comms, just now. We aren't supposed to read it until the morning, but a solar flare caused a time displacement..." Jazz babbled. He was close to hysterical. "We got it two hours early."

Prime stepped back. A giant hand pressed down onto him, time and gravity and the deep thrum of the planet under the thin crust. Prowl had told him this would happen.

"Then I will wait for the order to be confirmed, and I'll do what needs to be done."

_"You will not!"_ Lubricant seeped from under the mirrored visor, "You will not!"

"Jazz," said Prime, "all that I am is a placeholder for the Matrix. Perhaps it's time it was returned to its rightful place in the Temple."

"But you'll _die_!"

Prime leant against the doorframe. To be dutiful, to accept his fate - that took all the strength he had. He wanted to fight to live, but he'd already lived, all the parts that made him. Orion, his ghostly protoself, had lived. Perhaps he'd even known what it was to be loved, before he was appropriated. Before he was betrayed.

"I'm so tired, Jazz."

"You're only saying that because you're missing Starscream," hissed Jazz. "But what about the rest of us? Autobots have fought and died for a _living_ Prime, not some monument gathering dust in a Temple, in a place they'll never see."

"Jazz..."

"_Come with us_."

Prime didn't know what to say. He would be like a thief running off with treasure if he did.

"What about Prowl? You'll be complicit in this."

"Prowl knows. We've talked, him and I. If you'd have been allowed to bond with Starscream, I would be dead."

"That's not necessarily so."

"Optimus," Jazz laid a hand on his forearm, silencing him. "All our days have been gifted to us, ever since you were reborn, and brought us back from defeat and extermination. And it was _you_. Not the Matrix. We want you to live. The whole Ark wants you to live. Nobody will stop us from leaving. A convoy is waiting outside. We're driving out to the proving grounds, and taking that ship."

#

The desert night was immense in its silence, the clear summer sky festooned with stars. Prime skidded to a stop before unfolding himself from the tight spaces of his alt mode, his exoskeleton sliding out from concertinaed folds, his mass squeezing from warm subspace into cold air.

_I've stopped being Prime. I'm just a criminal._

Oddly enough, it filled him with a heady excitement. Not a Prime. Not an untouchable icon, but as real as any of the others. He touched his chest, felt the Matrix beneath the plates speak with the voices of a million beings.

Others were up ahead, dark crouching shapes in a mesa shadow. Beyond them was the spill of light across the sand, turning it the colour of milk.

His retinue had consisted of hand-picked soldiers, the ones he could trust. But even during the journey here it has seemed like a funeral procession. He had sent them on ahead.

"Do you know what this is?" Bumblebee was saying as he approached. "It's the end of an era."

"Shush," said Jazz, and turned to nod at Prime. Bumblebee murmured apologies. They were uncomfortable in his presence, not knowing how to address him, who he was anymore. Certainly not their leader, when the widecast had spat out that terrible message, _Arrest On Sight..._

A signal code echoed faintly in Prime's internal-comms. It was time to move.

Beyond the military compound, the light stuttered and faded. Prime sensed holographic projections, but of a fractal complexity beyond anything he'd experienced before. Many days work had gone into hiding this part of the valley. Mirage would have had gorge on energon to achieve this level of disguise, to mould spacetime around their pilfered rocket, enough for a hundred soldiers.

It seemed such a waste, what with rations already stretched to their limits. Had the others deliberately starved themselves to feed Mirage?

As if out of a crystalline fog Prime saw the bulky ship, the fuselage almost obscured by the massive thrusters on either side. A squalling wind picked up dust and blew it across the valley floor, was caught up in the voxels and vectors of the hologram, made it shimmer ever so slightly. Mirage appeared at a hatch, saw Prime, and his expression was unreadable.

_I shouldn't be here,_ thought Prime, even as the others gathered around him and murmured farewells. _I shouldn't._

But what was done was done, and the time to change his mind had come and gone. His soldiers reached out to touch him as he passed, solemn and desperate. "Prime," they said. "Prime." A high note of grief was sounding, an ultrasonic whine. He was being lost to them.

The ship might have well been his tomb, for all that it stood there ready to swallow him up, an exotic-metal sarcophagus.

Last in, he had to brush past Mirage at the hatch. The Alpha 'bot closed the door, and in the close darkness he grabbed Prime's wrist.

"I did this for you."

Prime knew he should express a modicum of gratitude, but could only look aside. "I'm doing this for him."

Mirage dropped Prime's wrist, shock roiling across his high-caste features. "You shamed us," he hissed, "being with him. You brought down the glorious name of Prime, cheapened it. He's the reason the Matrix is being taken from you."

"Are we done?"

"You never knew. They used to _talk_. All the other 'bots. Thought you'd gone _mad_. And I would _defend_ you. Defend your name even as you rutted with him and polluted yourself."

Mirage was angling for a fight. Prime knew it. He growled with all the self-control he could muster, "Is that what you thought it was?"

"I know it was." Mirage inhaled, and exhaled, optics alight with an almost desperate emotion. He dragged a hand down Prime's chest. "My sparkmate. Or at least you could have been, and none of this would have happened." When Prime only glared at him, Mirage said, "_I'm glad he's dead_."

Prime didn't bother to restrain himself. He grabbed Mirage's neck with both hands and squeezed, felt the living cabling underneath stretch and skew, and Jazz was on him, and Perceptor, both too small to make a difference.

Mirage batted uselessly at Prime's hands. His optics flickered and dimmed. The spent energon flecked his silent gasping mouth...

_The holo,_ a voice was screaming, _you'll break the holo if you kill him!_

...Prime released Mirage. The smaller bot collapsed up against the titanium wall. Acid in Prime's conduits, seeping into his protoflesh. But he'd never felt so calm in all his life when he spoke. "You want to know what it was like, being with him? When I was inside him?" He pressed his face close to Mirage's own, cheek grazing his, mouth close to Mirage's audio receivers. "When he took my mass into his body?"

Optics off and in darkness, he could imagine that terrified panting as the final overture before culmination, the dazzling pause before his circuits sizzled and his mass transmuted to liquid delight. "I wanted to surrender to him. I wanted to taste his Decepticon protoflesh as he overloaded. Do you want to know what it was like, to be on my knees before him as he climaxed? He made me feel like a slave, like a _god._ When I spilt my flesh into him it was like fucking Primus himself."

Mirage moaned in despair at such coarse words coming from Prime's mouth. Prime wasn't finished, the rage steaming from his exoskeleton. He moved to Mirage's other ear, a confessional whisper made as if through broken glass.

"Could you offer that to me?" Prime growled. "Could you replace what Starscream gave me?"

Mirage's horrified exhale, and then, "It's not you talking. You've been compromised."

Prime pushed away, punched the side of the wall, hard. He was sick with repressed overload, hot memories. He wanted Starscream, physically missed him beyond mere grief, sick with wanting, sick with exhaustion, sick with being ramped up with no outlet to spend himself into.

"All that I've told you is what you've taken from me, and I want you to remember it. Remember it every time you think of speaking to me, ever."

Perceptor and Jazz watched him, wary.

"Prime..." started Jazz.

"You should have left me behind," he snapped at them. "You're only prolonging the inevitable. I'm not your Prime anymore."

They watched him leave, crawling deeper into the ship's internals, no sound but Mirage's enraged sobs, and the thrusters rising in potential, ready for the explosive cough that would break gravity and tear a hole through living light.

###


	21. Deception

Twenty-one: Deception

* * *

Incandescent with rage, Tesselax slapped Solarstar and screamed, "You stupid little slagger, the only reason I secure a high price for you is that you aren't with every dirty glitch that comes through my doors!"

"Please, Lord, please!"

"Traitor!" screamed Tesselax, not finished. "Mendacious deceiver!" He hit Solarstar about his head with fists like mallets. Solarstar tried to protect himself, hands raised, supplicating.

The stasis girdle interpreted the sudden, panicked moves as offensive, froze Solarstar's arms by his side. A blow sent him reeling sideways, the fall was hard. He hit the floor and did not move.

Tesselax stood over his slave in panting rage, angry enough to want to hit him further, but not so far gone to know who made him the most energon credits, who couldn't be damaged.

Starscream gritted his jaws, watched Tesselax's punishments. He did not need to understand Autobot to know what Tesselax was saying. If Solarstar was clever, he'd keep still. Starscream had been in that position before, most important and beloved of a more powerful individual, taking punishment that was meant for someone else. The other courtesans, Decepticon and Empty alike, looked sideways, uncomfortable.

"And you!" Tesselax pointed a bladed finger at Starscream, "You will take who I send you, and you will service him, and you will earn your keep!"

He left the chamber, trunked feet gouging sparks from the metal floor. Somewhere deeper in the Dead End pits an engine growled to a stop, a startling silence.

One of the slaves - a gestalt Decepticon once, but nothing since his four brothers had been ground to dust - crept forward and touched Solarstar with a medic's confidence.

"The stasis device has mind-locked him. He'll come around."

"Solarstar was stupid," A pale Neutral of low rank shifted in her seat. Where her legs should have been, only wires and metal shear dangled. Her services were specialised. She did not bother to hide her wounds, such stark contrast to her face. The neutral slave was extraordinarily beautiful, granting her entrance as one of Tesselax's menagerie. "Stupid. Thinking he could hide his extra-curricular activities from Tesselax."

A mutter of voices. Agreement and excuses.

Starscream stood up. His new-wings ached almost constantly now. His joints burned. He wanted to transform, fold in on himself and take on an alt-mode, wanted it as badly as a protoform might, imago to adult. But he had to wait, _wait_. Wait until the sweeping planes were of a size. Wait until his soldiers came back with word of support among his desperate people. Wait until his _lover_ was dead, that confusing human word.

He paced the dull floor, sick of waiting, sick of getting information second-hand when he needed it now.

"Fulcrum, what's the latest on the planned attack?" He sounded tired, even to himself.

The gestalt looked about, cautious, but only Decepticons and Neutrals occupied this chamber. The Autobot designated slaves were kept in better quarters, far from here, close to the penumbra. Sunlight might even dapple the crystal surfaces of their temple as they learnt the love-arts. Many would be trained in the art of courtisanerie. A well trained Autobot slave might make a potential erotic partner for a high-ranked senator, accompany him on events, maybe even one day become a Bondmate, if he was pleasing enough.

That level of sophistication was beyond Tesselax's forte. There were no designated Autobots in these chambers. Here was only darkness.

"They say Megatron is still waiting for the Matrix's arrival. The Elders have already announced it is en-route to Cybertron."

"Now?

"As we speak. I also hear that a Decepticon militia has been formed in every dark-end province from here to the River. They only wait Megatron's command."

Solarstar's stasis girdle released with crackle of electrons. Solarstar sat up, gasping. He wiped the foam of lubricant from his mouth.

"You have to get out of here." His first words tore from him. "Starscream, you can't be reduced to this."

He pointed at the other slaves with barely concealed derision. Some of them, the ones not fuse-blown with smoked energon, nodded. They knew what they were, the conduit-crawlers, the rusted princes of Dead End.

"If you hadn't noticed," said Fulcrum, sitting back on his haunches, "He's tied up with a stasis device just like the rest of us."

"Besides," added the pale neutral, in between puffs of energon, "it's not like mass-sharing is going to kill him." A hard stare at Starscream. "I'm sure he's done it before."

"He's right," said Starscream between gritted jaws. "What difference does it make if I prostitute myself here, rather than in some Primus-forsaken Decepticon court?"

Solarstar struggled to his feet. "Why would Megatron want you here of all places? Have you even thought? This life of comparative luxury? He could have placed you on a Blood River workbarge if he wanted you to suffer, sent you to the gladiator pits if he wanted you to die quickly."

It was Fulcrum who answered. "The shame," he said. "Whore yourself, and no Decepticon will follow you. Better for a Decepticon to die, then live like this."

Fulcrum's sweet Decepticon voice cracked near the end. _The shame._

Starscream turned his head aside.

"It's too late, I've already done it."

Vehemently, Solarstar disagreed. "It's not the same! Being the Prime's lover is not the same!"

A hush fell about the room. Nobody had known Starscream's secret here.

"It's an advantage!" Solarstar continued, "An advantage we Decepticons never had before. We've never understood Autobots, we've never had enough intel, enough connections to be effective."

"Megatron has tried to kill me before, intel or not."

Fulcrum joined the argument. "That hurt him, politically. I still had a brother alive then."

"And we need to keep you alive," said Solarstar. "Do you think Megatron will care about your existence once he takes the Temple? You'll be nothing but a Dead End whore, worthless, and no match for him."

The neutral coughed smoke. "He can't do anything now, precious Solar. Not while wearing that little belt. Tesselax will find him, bring him back."

Solarstar was quiet, almost as quiet as the oscillating frequency of machinery, Cybertron's deep, vascular song. "The Oracles," he said. "We'll go to them."

* * *

Jazz had found among their number a soldier, a small mech who could use controls built solely for human hands. The little Autobot radioed their position - just past lunar orbit and accelerating - an hour after take-off.

_"We'll reach Martian orbital distance before the end of the day-cycle. When I throttle back you'll be able to move about, some."_

Astroscope, keep the stealth activated. They can still detect us this far out.

Affirmative.

Prime lay on his makeshift berth and listened to Jazz's back and forth with his pilot. Standard Cybertronian-sized access ways and rooms had been subdivided to uselessness - Jazz could have crawled through with some difficulty if he'd had to, but Prime would have tangled up in the bare electricals.

Stuck in the hold, he may have well been in prison.

Prime sat up. He put his head between his knees, ill from acceleration. Exoskeletal strong he might be, but the proto-organic parts suffered under this vectorised gravity. He could barely find the strength to hold his exoskeleton together.

There were no windows here, nothing to distract him.

That first roar of takeoff had been painful. Gravity had pressed onto him with ancient force, pressed him into the memory foam, squeezed his bodymass into a corner of his exoskeleton until he came close to off-lining.

Once they'd escaped the Earth's pull the acceleration became smooth. His body adjusted, pulling some of his mass back into subspace. Approaching the barrier of time and light, the walls of the ship began to flux like a memory.

Perceptor and Mirage had squirreled away in another hold section. The dividers between the hold sections were little more than rigid plastic epoxy-welded to the roof and floor. The low sing-songs of Alpha dialect reached Prime through the walls. Perhaps they thought he could not understand, didn't bother to keep quiet. But his creator had been an Alpha, the great thaumaturge Trion, and in a sense Alpha Dialect was his native tongue, his first spoken words.

"Where did it go wrong? We were happy before he came."

"You're no Oracle," said Perceptor. "How were you to know?"

"It's like a bad recharge dream. I keep thinking that any moment I'm going to wake up next to him, and all this...it was only a vision. I was sparkbonded Perceptor! I was sparkbonded to a Prime! All my work, all the dreams of our Alpha kind, gone!"

Perceptor paused for several seconds, clearly declining to mention that Mirage's meticulous campaign for a Prime bonding had caused Perceptor to spend several days in the brig.

"But you knew there were others angling for your position, Mirage." Perceptor was politic. "He could easily have chosen Ratchet or Bumblebee. They're both older than the pair of us, war veterans. He could even gone to Cybertron. Secured an Autobot of high rank."

"I wish he had! I could have understood then!"

"You yourself only became Autobot after your faction aligned with the Decepticons during the Decepticon War. You wore their colours for a time before turning. Why do you hate Starscream for doing the same thing?"

"Because I knew him before!"

Prime raised his head. Perceptor spoke for him, "You did?"

"During the last war. My brothers wished to chose a side that would benefit them in the extended future. I tried to tell them that the Decepticons would benefit nobody, that they were liars and traitors, that the Autobots were rulers and leaders. But they were certain that a delegation was in order, and we went to Polyhex, like neutral fools. It sickened me Perceptor! Being among them!" A shuffling pause. "Our delegation leader was a fine Alpha, designation Vapour. He was of a size, and noble, and could trace his line back to Alpha Prime himself. Oh, I miss him Perceptor, he was a true leader. Not like..." He stopped himself before saying anything further. "Not unlike other great leaders of our history."

"What happened?" There was a blunt note to Perceptor's voice. "Did he die? Did Starscream kill him?"

"No! Worse, much worse! Already Megatron and Starscream were battling for leadership and supremacy, and they were trying to win over the newcomers. Vapour was seduced. Vapour was lost to us."

"Seduced? Won over to the Decepticons?"

"No," screeched Mirage. "When Megatron could not win him with his inglorious promises, they used other tactics! That filthy traitor Decepticon coupled with Vapour, did things with him that no Autobot would do. He whored himself for his Decepticon cause, whored himself with my brother Alpha as he has with so many others!"

A blank silence fell over the hold. In the next partition Prime found himself frozen, as if all of his circuits had stopped at once.

_You lie._

"That can't be true."

"You think I haven't seen this before? What happened to Vapour is what's happened to Prime. Starscream singled them both out as leaders and destroyed them both. At least Megatron fights on his feet."

Prime was trying to find the emergency reserves to burst his way into the hold, when a delicate touch scraped along his exoskeleton.

At first he was going to brush it away, before seeing Astroscope. He was a tiny 'bot, barely over two metres tall. "Wait," the pilot breathed.

A thump and creak, Perceptor was on his feet. "Mirage, don't say such things."

"He was friends with you, but he was not your lover. You wonder why that was, Perceptor? For all the sweet words you whispered to him, all your pleading? Because you were useless to him. He would have had Prime's code from the beginning. I heard that he would never sparkbond with Prime even as he lead our spiritual leader into iniquity. Why do you think that was? Because Optimus would know that he was full of lies and deceit then. Would know, and cast him out! All this time I've done nothing but tried to protect our Leader and I've failed each time. Now it's too late, and my hands are tied!"

Perceptor must have made a face, shaken his head, made a _No_, because Mirage cried, "Are you blind Perceptor? Did he compromise you too?"

Prime looked across at Astroscope. "You better say something quick, because I'm a picosecond away from killing him."

"We're being tracked, Prime. They're scanning subspace as we speak."

He pulled out one of the human-sized data-pads, pointed out the ship graphic. "They must have used Space Bridge technology to get to this system. We're cloaked at the moment, but if that holo breaks..."

"They're Cybertronian."

"Yes."

"Autobot."

Astroscope slumped. "Yes. Celestial Temple origin, which means it's either priest or elite-soldier. I don't suspect the former."

The Matrix seemed to cave in his chest. Prime sucked a breath.

"How long before we reach Titan?"

"Day. Little more maybe. We'll have to do it in that time. The subspace crypto isn't going to withstand a brute attack for much longer. After that...we'll be totally visible. Ignore what Mirage says."

Prime nodded in defeat, rubbed his chest, snarled his fingers in the small bits of Terran disguise that he never quite remembered to rearrange in anthro-mode, a window louver, a mirror, a wiper blade, petroleum shine of his pectoral plates.

The pilot misinterpreted the gesture as a salute, returned it, before retreating to the cockpit.

He managed to doze, too sick from acceleration to fully recharge. When he woke, Perceptor was crouching in the doorway, watching him.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

Prime threw a look over Perceptor's shoulder, and Perceptor shook his head. "Gone into recharge."

"He shouldn't have come. Wheeljack could have retrofitted a holo to this ship, given time."

"That Mirage," sighed Perceptor. "And yet you can't fault his loyalty to Primus and the Autobot race."

"As you could mine, now?"

Perceptor found his way next to Prime. There was not a great deal of room in the hold, now that they both occupied it. "He wanted you to hit him. Back on takeoff. He was goading you. He does feel guilty about Starscream."

"Hate and guilt are not the same thing."

"I doubt he knows what he thinks. These last lunar cycles have broken him down and built him up again. All of us. Starscream was a force of nature, sublime chaos."

There was a bitter note there. Perceptor's feelings for Star ran deep. An odd heat radiated off him, his body adjusting to hard G.

Without waiting for an invitation, Perceptor unhooked his chest armour, reached for Prime's own. Prime tried to pull back, but there was nowhere to go. As politely as he could he pushed Perceptor's insistent hands away.

"Perceptor, no."

"You need to do this. You've got to overload, you're wound up tighter than a magnet coil. You need to be clear-headed for whatever we're going to face out there."

"No," he said, again but he might have been speaking to the wall for all that it mattered. His words were only a distraction, it was the Matrix that mattered, and him only an associated annoyance, a machine to keep under control and quiet by any means necessary.

Perceptor stroked the Matrix, an awed and blissful expression that didn't suit him at all. Almost hungry.

"Ah, such a wonder..."

Prime recoiled from the contact. He remembered his first spark-shared time, the esteemed warrior who had broken his spark casing and exposed the crystal lattice inside. Some of the old rituals were still in effect, and the act had not been done in privacy, but Prime still remembered the damage on his unnamed warrior's face. Deliberately they had chosen one who was not attractive, whose scars were brutal and terrible, yet Prime had first overloaded to that stoic fighter, had not forgotten him for years afterwards.

They had been careful, the Elders. There would be no complications with love or unfettered emotion. The warrior had been perfunctory and cold, and that was that.

He couldn't help but line that moment up against this moment, and the startling, painful first bodysex time with Starscream. Then, every little switch had been turned on to Star's terrible, overwhelming presence. Prime only took on Perceptor with numb surrender. It was all he had left to him, passionless scrape and rub of spark casings, the Matrix writhing with shared discomfort, Perceptor trying to coax pleasure out of him when there was nothing left in him but dust.

Perhaps it was their close confines, the dour mood over the ship, but Perceptor was uncharacteristically rough, trying to get Prime to iris his still-tender case wider. And the ship was accelerating now, approaching the light-speed constant, and Prime was too weak and sick and cramped up into the hold's corner to roll away. He heard himself saying, "Just stop, it's not..."

A hand in his groin, then, pulling at his pelvic armour. A whisper from far away, "You did it with him. I'll do this for you. It's what you need. It's all you've needed..."

Prime slapped his hand away, harder now. "What's gotten into you?"

More attention on his spark, and the Matrix - too tender for anything but the lightest of caresses - was groped and squeezed cruelly.

He overloaded, not because there was any choice or pleasure there, only because the Matrix was so completely wired into him, and then it was not a dance and pour of electricity and matter, more like a fuse sizzling out. Enough energy flowed into him that he could push Perceptor off. Confused, Prime patted down his battered spark case. The staples in the healing protoflesh snagged and pulled, bled silver.

Prime threw Perceptor a wounded glance. "That was uncalled for." He tried to staunch the silver with his hands. "Why did you do that?"

Unreadable expression on Perceptor's face. "If only you knew."

Something wrong with his voice. Accents stressed the wrong way. Prime felt his tendons loosening in a characteristic panic mode.

If he had any questions, they were all answered with Perceptor appearing at the doorway, pale face blank with surprise and the mech next to Prime, Not-Perceptor, clicking with agitation, his colours fading from red to iridium blue...

* * *

Starscream woke with a gasp, set the cables swinging, roused Solar from recharge. They'd tied themselves in to the underside of a conduit junction, dangled there like wall-crawlers on a ceiling while taking much needed rest.

Solar looked over Starscream, concerned.

"Your spark hurts you?"

Starscream shook his head. "It's nothing." He plucked at the stasis belt. "But this thing has been buzzing for the last half-cycle."

"They're looking for us."

"If you can disable the escape-codes, couldn't you have tackled the tracking-codes as well?"

Solarstar sniffed. "Tesselax would have known they were off instantly. We'd not have made ten paces outside his conduit. Don't worry. There's too much interference here."

"You didn't have to come with me. I'd have found the Oracles on my own."

A hovership buzzed overhead, searchlights swinging. They pressed further up into the shadow. But it was only a repair device, an autophage searching out weaknesses in the Cybertronian superstructure, as dumb as an animal. They had still been careful. Starscream had complained at first, had needed to be coaxed into letting Fulcrum paint him black. It was theatrical paint, not meant to last any more than a night with a client, but his striking red thorax and pale limbs were muted into the same shade as a darkened conduit. His wings remained grey.

"Maybe I didn't _have_ to come." Solar unclipped himself from his hiding place and swung to a walkway below. He waited patiently as a series of levitating goods platforms sailed past, chose one, and hopped onto the small surface. Starscream joined him. Their space was limited, and they had to huddle close. "But I can tell you - you'd never have found them on your own."

Their platform swung out wide from the conduit, and for a brief, vertiginous moment the sheer immensity of The Pit was revealed, a thousand kilometres deep by Earth measure, perhaps even into Cybertron's unexplored heart. Static electricity discharges sporadically laced the walls, violet light revealing the immeasurable coils and conduits of the Deeps.

The walkway began to angle down, following an old goods-delivery path, blind platform following cyberemone trails left by its automated siblings. There was much about Cybertron that was like a large, living thing, thought Solar.

"No wonder the Autobots hold their Primus-Cult with such awe," Solar said aloud. "You could believe it, looking at such a sight."

Starscream must have been thinking of the same thing. "It's how they keep their population in thrall." His words were almost lost to the roaring winds generated by the Pit. "How could a Decepticon Brotherhood match the idea of this God-Planet?"

"Did you ever see it?"

Starscream looked at him sideways, suspicious.

"The Matrix." Solar urged. "The Prime Spark. This relic of Primus that the Prime carries around within himself?"

Solar felt Starscream's discomfort. Starscream explained in hesitant mechanical terms the protoflesh _Prima Materia_ of the Matrix and its exoskeletal cradle. Explained how it sat in the Prime's chest like a symbiotic parasite. The Matrix wrapped around the Prime Spark, making them conjoined, so that one component evidently could not be removed without taking the other. He explained this, and Solar only smiled.

"Perhaps you misunderstood. Did you see it during your lovemaking? Joined spark-to-spark maybe, in that curious Autobot ritual?"

"He made me touch it, once," said Starscream. If there was any awe in him, it was muted. The Matrix of Leadership was a craven idol of an enemy.

"You think it might have been the remains of a god?" Solar said in that little teasing to wheedle favours from clients, "And did you bare your spark to it?"

"_I couldn't_." Starscream's new optics were memory-hot. "He believed that I didn't wish to spark-share with him. But it was more than that. This _thing_, venerated among the Autobots. In a living creature. It was _wrong_."

"Does it bring a Prime pleasure, to have the Matrix touched? Surely it can't be purely parasitic."

"I never gave that much thought," said Starscream, tightly.

"Come on," Solar was coquettish, and could not help to tease. "I'm as much curious as any 'bot. Because if such a thing brought him pleasure, and you would not give him that..."

Starscream's eyes shone hotter.

"All I'm saying, is that you have to be pragmatic, Starscream. I know the lover's arts just as well as some pampered Autobot-designated courtesan. Deny a thing, and the object of your interest may go elsewhere to find it. Your Optimus did it before."

* * *

Mirage screamed, "I did what had to be done! I'm protecting you!"

"Don't you talk to him," shouted Jazz, "don't!" He pushed in front of Mirage, ostensibly stopping him from approaching Prime, but in reality stopping Prime attacking Mirage in a cold, moral rage. He'd come in a second behind Perceptor, seen what Perceptor saw and didn't understand it at first. Prime and Mirage, chest-plates open as if they'd shared sparks. Anyone but Mirage he might have understood, but not this, not the black rage in Prime's eyes making him look just as if his optics had smoked over. The silverblood pooled through his fingers. Mirage just looked sullen, like a protoform caught out stealing energon.

Perceptor took a step towards Prime, but he jolted back with a baleful glare of warning. He was not ready for any Perceptor now, real or fake. He'd shut his armour as soon as the others had come in. The silvermass was still oozing out of his chest and down his abdomen.

"Someone's got to check on that," said Perceptor, pointing. You can't let-"

"Can't let the Matrix get infected?" roared Prime. "What about what the rest of me needs? Or have you already consigned me to the Waste Disposal already?"

"You serve the Matrix as we serve the Matrix!" Mirage spat back. "You die for it, if you need to die for it!"

Not enough space in the hold, to contain them all. His mass reduced by gravitational forces like hitting a wall. Barely enough strength to stand, but he found it. The monster they all said he was, a construction of dead things, rising to his full height.

"No," said Jazz, sensing the mood. "No."

Mirage squared his shoulders, ready for anything.

"You-" Prime started, but he could not finish, for Astroscope squealed a warning though internal-comms and they were thrown against the bulkhead, the ship's skin shivering with the shockwave.

_We're braking, we're braking!_

The wall became transparent for moment, non existent, then as pliant as gel, the atoms bouncing between real and subspace, absorbing the massive forces that would have torn a solid thing apart. Jazz vomited silver. Mirage screamed. Prime wrapped his hands over his chest and groaned as his protoflesh pulled into transformation mode and forgot to take his exoskeleton with him. Astroscope must have found the button for the inertial dampeners, because the pain stopped, all of a sudden, leaving them gasping on the floor.

"_Sorry,"_ said Astroscope over the radio. "_The gas giants have some weird gravity going on. We'll be there within the hour."_

Jazz stood next to a dazed Mirage. "One problem solved. Perceptor, get him into the other room will you?"

Still wobbly, Perceptor nodded and dragged Mirage into the other hold. Prime and Jazz sized each other up. Jazz wiped the silver off his chin.

"You trust me, Prime?"

Prime held his chest tighter. What had just happened to him? What had Mirage just done? His recollection seemed as unreal as the walls under hard G.

"Tell Prowl he's in charge of the Ark. When you get back. You'll be Second."

"Optimus, no. You're coming back with us."

"I won't be. The Matrix is going back to Cybertron."

Jazz sighed, "Oh, Optimus..." He laid a hand on Prime's own, the one gripping his chest so tightly. "Let's see then. The Matrix is still attached to _you_, and that's what I care about."

Prime released his chest. It seemed so pathetically intimate, opening himself up like this in front of his friend.

Jazz averted his eyes, slightly, an action that was ingrained in them all when looking upon the Matrix, before returning to Prime, trying to pull together what basic medical training he had and investigating the damage. Delicate fingers that could wire and defuse the most complex munitions now mapped out the missing sutures, confirmed that nothing had warped, come loose.

Prime couldn't look at him, couldn't bear the body-memory of being touched there, the unpleasant closeness of it.

"Stupid Mirage," hissed Jazz, half to himself. "You were in no condition to be having spark-relations. He got overly excited and..." He stopped as the anger built. "It was rape, Optimus, he took you under deceit and hurt you. I could have him arrested."

A memory roughed him up, and he repeated words once said in raw desperation, "_Once I was a Leader, feared and respected..._ Jazz. Those things apply to me no longer. I'm not even an individual under Cybertron law now."

"Don't say that."

Perhaps it was only the inertial dampeners against the high gravity of their slowdown. Perhaps only that. But Prime's body, his weight and heft seemed parasitic to him, awful. He rubbed his forearms with a fist, almost repulsed by himself.

"They say the Matrix and the spark carries the memories of all the Primes, from Primon to me." He stilled. "I hope this is not the case. There are things I want to remember, but things I don't. Perhaps it is good that there won't be a living Prime after me."

There were muttered arguments from the next section. Mirage had woken. Perceptor was bawling him out.

Jazz shook his head, staunched the rest of the massblood with fine platinum gauze, and let Prime close up.

_"We're making an approach to Titan now,"_ Astroscope commed. _"It's got a real heavy atmosphere, so hang on."  
_

* * *

The Kaon Deeps were rich in dark histories. The Autobot legends differed in their approach to the Pit, some saying that it was one of the wounds inflicted during the great battle between Primus and Unicron. An older, less honourable version of the story had Unicron sheathing his mass into Primus' wounded body, during the interim time when Primus was his slave.

At the Pit's deepest level, the Kaon Pool was a tumult of dark roil and colour flash like black opal, not the same element as Primus' Blood. The inhabitants had other names for the river, not all of them repeatable. Crudely, it was called The Spill, the spend of Unicron, remains of his brutal ownership of Primus. Over aeons, the corrosive liquid slowly ate away at the metal lithosphere, gradually working its way through deeper and deeper layers.

The two fugitives climbed off the platform at the Spill's edge. The rusted metal shore formed a crude beach. Starscream was reminded of the red sand of the desert surrounding the Ark, the sand against his exoskeleton when Prime took him, and sent him away...

He was not pleased with the association. A gritty coriolis wind whipped up, scattered stinging metal flakes at them. As Starscream limped after Solar, his feet snarled up in metal plates. He kicked out, dislodged a hand, a jaw, an empty spark case in succession, all from different individuals.

"Come on," said Solarstar, "this way." He scaled a retaining wall and into a nest of shanty-huts built haphazardly over an abandoned ferry. Rust stains bled down the pale surfaces. Starscream eyed the shadows warily.

"How do you know where to go?"

"I lived here when I was protoform, with my sisters. My designer was a protomass breeder. Before she discovered she had the gift of sight and joined the Oracles of the Kaon Deeps."

"Then why are we here, and not there?" The clips on Starscream's exoskeleton began to tingle, trying to power up apparatus that was no longer present. He missed his weaponry. He might not have had any extra senses apart from that of danger, but that was sense enough.

"Because the greatest of them lives here. The best...and the greatest disappointment."

Indigo lightening illuminated the Pit, the terraces of the Spill's relentless downwards path. Solar pointed high, where hovercraft were already starting to plumb past their diving depths. "They're looking. Quickly."

He grabbed Starscream's hand, pulled him along. Starscream's ankle buckled with each step.

"I can barely walk in this slagging splint," Starscream hissed. "We have to slow down." He inhaled sharply. "My power's not going to hold out much longer either."

"Not far." Solar propped himself under Starscream's arm, supported him down a half-pipe conduit. "Ahead, look."

Yellow-tinged chemical light played off scraps of poly-carbon sheeting, a wall or a warning. They'd entered into a market-place, or what sufficed for that in the Pit. Hawkers cackled to each other in a patios neither of them knew. The stench of the Spill was strong here. A one-eyed mech patrolled a series of rusted kettles, distilling down pool-liquid for its residual energon. One would rather have eaten mud than the foul slurry that came from the distillation vats. Starscream dared not repeat that he was hungry - he was in no mood to eat sludge.

A mech was leaning against an illuminated door, arms folded, face as handsome and as blank as an Idol. Red light picked out features almost-anonymous in their regularity. Starscream knew at once that she was _budded_, bred in the old sacred way, where mass was split to form a protoform without help from another. Blanks, mass-positive. All mechs had it in them to reproduce, but not with the regular deliberation as these master-manipulators of subspace design. She was an Oracle.

Solar gave a swift bow that was not returned. Starscream was not one for genuflecting towards anybody, and only met her heavy stare. He stood back, arms folded.

"Is your mistress present?" Solar asked in plaintalk.

The young Oracle snapped a sliver of black energon off between her jaws, her expression a measure of bored insouciance.

"She is."

"...may we see her?"

Blank eyes that gave nothing away. "Don't know if she'll want to see anyone today." Looked the pair of them over dismissively. "'Specially since you 'ain't carrying no energon."

"She will, when she sees who I have." Solar pressed Starscream forward.

A blink, and a huff of impatience. "That supposed to impress me?"

"You've seen him before, haven't you? In a vision? In a dream?"

"Solar," grumbled Starscream, uncomfortable.

The Oracle's soft face became less-than-friendly, blue optics flickering. At last she turned back and called down the conduit, a smattering of words in crude Autobot. An equally husky and bored voice called back.

"Come on then," said the sullen Oracle.

Starscream tried to catch Solar's eyes, get some answers. Why would he be known by these Pit denizens? He was a name among his people, not a face.

"They're Oracles," said Solar by way of explanation, "They would have seen us coming."

He clicked impatiently at the smaller Decepticons, before turning to the Oracle. "You speak Autobot?" Starscream asked, as they moved into the conduit.

"My mistress speaks Autobot," said the young Oracle haughtily. "She has lived in the Celestial Temple. She has spoken with God Soldiers." With that, she shot Starscream a low look, full of suspicion, before announcing their entrance to the chamber.

The second voice had belonged to a crab-like mech, a barge-loader with missing front limbs. A mech like that could only lose his forehands in an unfortunate accident, or a cruel punishment. An odd creature to be employed in the service of the Mistress Oracle, unless his talents were diplomatic, and cunning.

Yet another exchange of Autobot. The crab-mech was not pleased.

"Enough." The voice belonged to a silhouette behind a frayed golden curtain. "I will see them."

The Mistress Oracle lay on a litter, energon pipe in hand, surrounded by smoke. She sat up when the two Decepticons entered, made a caste-sign over her Autobot insignia.

"'Lectra, bring the dark one closer. My optics aren't what they used to be."

Lectra, the young oracle, gave Starscream what could only be charitably called a push towards the curtain. Carefully, Starscream drew back the rusting links, stepped into the sick yellow light.

If he'd ever been unsure what a bad attempt at re-birthing and remaking was, he was unsure no longer. Optimus had been constructed with skill and utmost care, but this mech was a jumble of different parts without a thought as to aesthetics. Instead of a whole exoskeleton, she had been tessellated with a dozen different individuals. The donated legs were too small to hold her, the arms reticulated the wrong way. He saw madness in her cloudy optics. This creature was meant to help them?

She stared for a long time at Starscream before pulling a confused, sour face. Starscream wondered, had she been beautiful once, like Lectra, her common, if arrogant acolyte? Who had she birthed, to make her important enough to be kept alive in this reduced state? The early layers of her exoskeleton were a pale, pinkish red, evidence of some skill. The later parts were scrounged, refuse.

"You have to help us," said Solar from behind the curtain. "We're being hunted down by those who would kill me, and enslave him in shame."

"Why come to us?" asked Lectra. "Even the Dead End Oracles have more status." A darted glace, and an added, "Though they could never match you, Mistress."

"Because nobody will dare cross _her_." Solar nodded towards the remade Oracle.

The Oracle coughed smoke. "You," she said, pointing at Starscream, "What is your name?"

"That is Starscream," said Solar. "I am Solarstar."

The old Oracle took another draw of burnt energon. "I was once like her," a point at Lectra, "whole and wonderful. I was once feted by the highest of the Autobot ranks, an Oracle who was never wrong. And I am _never wrong_. It is life that is wrong."

Lectra came to her mistress' side, knelt and patted her backwards arm. "You are tired, you must rest."

The Oracle cursed at her acolyte, waved her away, "I was not wrong, when they cast me out! They told me the prophecy was invalid, but perhaps it was yet to come!"

"Mistress, please!" pleaded Lectra. "Not this again!"

"Do you know who I am?" said the old Oracle to Starscream, imperiously, "Do you know my name?" She rose from her litter on unsteady, uneven legs, like a Queen, like a nightmare combined. "I am the famed Oracle of the Celestial Temple. More than a Thaumaturge and a priest combined. Many Primes I have seen in my life, and all have worshipped me...I am Elita One."

* * *

TBC


	22. For You To Find

Twenty-two: For You To Find

* * *

The Pit groaned in senescent pain. This shifting inverted island of rust and ruin spoke in its own language, of a world in agony, a world pierced and divided, a world with the unhealed wound. The Decepticon culture gave little credence to the stories of Primus and Unicron - they were little more than necessary legends of a bygone age, creation myths for a wandering planet without a sun and a fractured history. One thing was certain: eventually the Pit would extend through the planet's core, split Cybertron in two. One day the two halves of the planet would drift off into space, orbit and magnetic oscillation interrupted, gravity reduced, atmosphere gone.

One day. But not today.

Or tonight, really, for there was no natural light down here, no photon energy like a pour of strength into ration-weakened limbs. Just darkness. The Pit rained fine flakes of corroded metal down the barrel of its cornada wound, reminded Starscream of the ice-crystal snowflakes of earth.

And to think of Earth was to think of Prime, and to think of him was to...

Restless, Starscream paced a catwalk of corrugated metal and scraps. His feet left dents in the decaying surface. A nanite slurry oozed against a retaining wall, made abortive attempts to scale the vertical surface. Starscream kicked a piece of scrap engine into the moat, watched the slurry roil over the rusted manifold in group-think hunger before letting it sink.

From a close alley came raucous shouts. The bash and clang of a vicious fight. Each grunt was punctuated by savage cheers. Even from the higher reaches of the Oracle's compound, Starscream could taste protoflesh in the foetid air. He'd been in battles. Had spilt the massblood of others. He knew that taste, and he felt a stab of yearning for that innocent time. There were no incongruities, no questions, no divided loyalties.

He'd been blind, not to see the clues of what was to come. Early in his career as a Decepticon warrior he was taught to identify the great Autobot leader from a distance. Almost as tall as Megatron, but a sinuous grace. Power, not the body of a warrior, but something else.

He should have known how that would attract him so. He should have known many things.

"Wise not to get too close," Blitzwing had said to him then. It had been the first words they'd spoken to each other as comrades. "I was there when the Autobot Prime defeated Megatron, the first time. In hand-to-hand combat, no less."

"You lie," Starscream had sneered at him. "No mech alive can defeat _Lord Megatron._"

Each of Blitzwing's three faces took on an odd look, exultant with terror and disgust. "I heard that he is not alive. I heard the Autobot Council took the darkest things, came to the Pit and retrieved from the water a slave-body, rotted and corroded. Heard they animated him with their foul magic. The line of Primus is dead, and all they can use now are corpses and refuse."

From a distance he had watched, many times, as again and again Megatron had tried and failed to defeat the Autobot's monstrous leader.

"They are desperate then," Starscream had said in observation, "if they are going that far. If they are willing to corrupt what is most important to them."

For the first time as a Decepticon he had felt doubt worm into him. Many times he would hear of Megatron's first battle with the new-raised Prime. _Megatron cut Prime with his blade, and filth bled out of him, melted away Megaron's hand - I saw it!_

Megatron has been the only one to see the Prime's face. Even he cowered from the horror...

The Prime feels no pain. He feels nothing, a dead thing...

Starscream had not quite believed it then, and even in the long years that followed. Thought there must be some weakness in Megatron, thought there must be something that could be exploited. Had fought Megatron many times himself, when his leadership seemed Pit-bent on leading their dwindling numbers to destruction.

The first time when Megatron had beat Starscream to near death, was the time Starscream learnt that all the stories about the Prime were true. Stronger than any living thing. More than a mere mech.

"There's nothing wrong with your fighting style, technically," Octane had said when nursing Starscream back to health after a particularly nasty punishment. "But most of your movements are - if you don't mind me saying, executed with the idea of strength behind them. You're quick, but whoever taught you didn't take your size into account."

"I wasn't taught," Starscream had hissed through a broken jaw. "I always knew how to fight."

"Old style. There's moves in you I haven't seen outside of Ceremonial display. Some of them - well, I've never seen them being executed in a real fight. Megatron knows them too well. He knows everything, Starscream. He's undefeatable."

Except with Prime.

Monster.

Lover.

And instantly Starscream regretted thinking of him, the lurch of emptiness in his belly, that heavy pulling need for mass entry. He rubbed his fist against his thigh once more, pulled an agitated wrist over his mouth, oh dark Straxus, to feel his mouth there again, to have him press his thighs apart and...

Distracted, he didn't hear the footfall on the walkway, and was startled when he turned to face the junkyard face of Elita One. The once-fine chain-link cloak about her pinkish shoulders was now ragged and rusted.

"What is it?" he asked the old Oracle, annoyed, certain she could see it in his optics, what he'd been thinking of.

She was so quick. He would have matched her, if he'd not been eating recycled energon, wasn't here in the dark with the alien stink of The Spill pervading everything like an audiolfactory note played off-key. But a sizzle of stasis-code through the woven band at his waist froze him. Only for a second, enough time for her.

A mantis-strike of forelimb uncoupled his chest-plates, tore ligaments to open him.

Crimson light spat across her uneven face before he could break the code, snap his armour shut. He raised his arm, made to shoot her in the spark even before he remembered his weapons were gone.

"Virgin!" She screeched, "You haven't been broken!"

"Rust you!"

Beyond the darkness, a pit-fighter screamed a dying cry.

If Elita cared about his reactions, she didn't show it. Her attention went elsewhere. She shook her fist at that place where the sky would be and started screaming at it in High Autobot, switched to a lower pit-dialect that Star could hear, _"Do you continue to jest with me Primus? Do you continue to send me lies in the guise of visions?"_

Starscream made to shove past the large reborn, but she stopped him with a string of broadcast code, mech language, straight at the stasis girdle. His joints seized, leaving him teetering in mid-stride.

Elita pulled his chest open again. "Oh, there's recharge there - you were starving once. But no evidence of spark-play. No overload ever fused your gimbals." She moved around him with an insect's careful high-step.

"Rsssst joo!"

His curses meant nothing to her.

"I'd have thought you would have been unbearably erotic to him. Unbearably. But I'm wrong of course. If he had wanted you, my poor gentle Optimus, he'd have bared his spark to you. He is strong. You would not have fought him off." The mantis-claw tapped his chest. "You know how I know? The inner gimbal of a spark-case is fragile. A spark-overload will make it weld at the metal, but break the organic ligament." Slight sneer. "We used to use it as our shibboleth, to detect the Decepticon spies who do not have spark play in their erotic lexicon."

He called her all manner of foulness through clenched jaws. Not that she would have understood anything more than her distorted, pit-level Insect tongue, but he wanted her to know the depths of his disdain.

The mantis-claw tapped him on the head, condescendingly. "Now, now, we'll have no such language here." She stroked his jaw then with the other arm, the anthro limb. Halfway between a caress and an inspection of goods. "Hmm. You look like _him._ That traitorous Warriormech. Perhaps this is what misleads me. But the rest of you, so reduced. It's a side effect of cloning, you understand. What emerges is often paltry as opposed to the original. It is why they chose to rebirth a Prime, rather than clone his spark."

Starscream glared at her with all the hate he could muster.

"What am I thinking, speaking of such things to you? A Decepticon - I doubt you understand much of our glorious history." Elita slid her mantis-limb into an ill-fitting gap afforded by two plates from different mechs, absently stroked her own spark.

"You missed out on a rare gift, if you did not sparkshare with him. We were lovers for a long time. So gentle, so giving. The others who have been given the honour have all said the same thing."

She laughed at him, Starscream's hate-look burned hot.

"How silly of me. Why would he have shared anything with a Decepticon, his hated enemy?

She gave him leave to speak, and he almost shrieked, "You tell me why, then! You're an Oracle!"

She stared at him, her optics wide. Starscream could feel spacetime warp and shift around her like a torn halo. She snarled at what she saw.

"Sacrilege! It is only a thing he would do to a whore or a slave."

"I am no slave!" Starscream shouted back. "I am no slave!"

"Oh, say that with a prostitute's girdle, and with your whore-caste friend. I have been with Optimus as a sparklover. I have shared his spark. I know the pride in him. Of all the Primes, he is the one who burns cleanest and brightest. He broke the Dark Prime curse, do you know that? Do you? Of course you wouldn't, some little Decepticon with a God Soldier face, taking his spill and thinking it meant anything to him."

Enraged at her entitlement Starscream spat back. "I took it because I wanted it, and he wanted me as his Consort, he called the name of Primus on overload-"

She slapped him, hard. He was free enough to keep his balance, but not return the favour.

"Silence! He would have been pure, before you! You have awoken the Dark Prime in him, awoken him to rut, and impurity! If he had wanted you to be his Consort, he would have sparkshared with you, treated you like a lover, exalted you! Not hidden you like a secret! Not a container for his lusts and his spill! He's had you, and-" there came a stink of strangelets torn from infraspatial moorings as she accessed the time continuum, "-he had that other one in there! Lain with him the way Nova Prime lay with his warriormech slaves!"

"Rust you, rust you!" Starscream was livid with shame. No mech had made him feel like this since the time on the sentinel ledge, when Optimus had said such hateful, misbegotten words.

Elita inhaled, her optics a blaze of white light, and presence made her spark shine like a reactor core. "He has sparkshared with others since you've been gone."

"You lie!"

"He has...just recently. It's still warm..." Was that a tiny moue of sadness in her face? Starscream watched the light fade from her and knew, with awful certainty, that Elita One was telling the truth.

"Tell me," she said, "who is this Mirage?"

* * *

He remembered coming to Earth, remembered it in a recharge dream, remembered the violence of striking the atmosphere, the heat of friction, the flames and the heat, and the windows burning and their circuits melting...

He'd been damaged then as he had now, one more profound than the other. Both times he'd clung to the crash webbing. Both times he'd heard the metal-on-metal screams, others' and his own. The skin of the ship marbleized between solids and translucency and it tried to take the braking force of striking Titan's atmosphere.

Jazz grabbed his forearm.

"Stay with me," he said over his comms, "stay with me."

"But I am here," he replied, before a big sphere of massblood undulated before his face - and splashed against the opposite wall. It seemed almost beautiful, the way the silver danced from the gaps in his body, and each time they escaped Jazz gave another cry, and Prime wanted to say, it doesn't hurt, not really, but his strength was leaving him, and he could barely find the strength to clutch the webbing anymore. Could feel Jazz's arms around him. Could feel that and not much more.

_We're hitting a gravitational anomaly - hang on..._

He was floating free now.

The Matrix was speaking to him, old Cybertron mech-code, a language so old it was almost alien in its strangeness. The symbiote that had given the Cybertronians life and sentience was hurting, and made him hurt.

_If I die, you die, said Prime to the hateful thing. Don't try to punish me, or you'll never go home._

(There's no real dialect between host and passenger, not really. But he's hit with a memory of a time before he won his status, before he had won his right to lead, when the Matrix still consumes his identity. The Temple Elders, those holders of political power, make him stand before witnesses with his chest-plates open as if he were some mere automaton, or worse, something trading bodypleasures in the Dead End. They make him show his intimate parts to Senators and Elders. Too young to argue, a spark-child in an adult body, a Prime without status, he stands there in indignity, but with an innate dignity that will not be cowed by the desultory way they push his chest-plates aside, angle him so he can be seen.

A priest approaches, cowled in black titanium mail. The Thaumaturgie sing to the Matrix. A pair of golden forks - intricately carved, but tines as sharp as barbs now fish around under Optimus' spark. The Matrix withdraws deeper into Prime's chest. The pain of it, when the priest catches the thing in the hooked forks, drags it out into view. A connoisseur of pain, a torturer, a cataloguer of pain, they would call the feeling...exquisite. Nothing else matches this effusion of agony. Prime feels his optics bleed massblood from the intensity of it. His knees shake. They say his body came from a slavemech who could not feel pain, but he's weakened by what they do to his passenger.

The Senators cry as one, as if his agony is an excitement to them.

The Matrix lives, it lives!)

"Prime? Optimus?"

Jazz?

_He wants to speak, but the Matrix has put his body into shutdown, overridden his higher functions. He can hear, but that's it._

"He's not dead. Oh Primus, what if he's dead? The Matrix will die, and we're nowhere near help and the ship is disabled and-" A slap, silencing the garbled voice.

"You should have thought of that before you attacked him."

"How _dare_ you say such a thing to me, Jazz. He needed it! You saw he needed it! Perceptor, tell him."

Shuffles, and a murmured, "He's gone into stasis. If only Ratchet was here, if only..."

"Perceptor - quiet!" Jazz again.

"Wait, oh no, _wait!_"

...

...

...

And he woke up, sudden as a blow.

His massblood had dried on him in the cold dense atmosphere. When he sat up, it fell off him like glitter-dust.

He was in a room. Not the ship, but somewhere solid. Gripping his chest, he looked around, cautious. He saw a long, low altar, of the kind only found in the Temple when they laid out their dead...

He was on his feet, sword arm retracted, but there was nobody around. A flame flickered in one corner from a brazier. He could smell an unprocessed fuel, some crude hydrocarbon. The light picked out all the corners of a space constructed out of a curious dark material. A kind of transmetal glass, by the way the alpha particles bounced of it.

Cautious, Prime did not withdraw his blade. A portcullis on the far end, mech-sized. More fires set into recesses led along a narrow corridor.

This was not some dead moon orbiting a gas giant. This was civilization.

With all his senses on high alert he followed the long, sloping passage. Up ahead, yellowing light collapsed into the darkness, too consistent to be from a fire. A petrochemical twilight, then. Titan's hydrocarbon atmosphere was too dense to let in much of the distant sun.

Step by step emerged onto a balcony, a curved courtyard that pushed out over a chasm. The aesthetic side of him stilled momentarily. Through hazy orange clouds came the elegant curve of Saturn across most of the horizon, the rings glinting from the distant sun.

He pushed light-sensitive nanites into his eyes, saw a glassy ocean as marbleized as an agate's eye, distant mountains. A geyser field splashed bright lava, ignited vapours.

"Magnificent, isn't it?"

Prime jolted around. Titan's light slipped and slid liquid shadows off a pale surface. Mechbody parts, the side of a cheek, a wrist, splayed fingers. And a Decepticon sigil, a burned-in exoskeletal scar. Prime's echolocation mapped out something huge behind it. He pulled his blade back, winding up for a killing strike.

"Show yourself, Decepticon!"

The shape moved forward on all fours, too big to stand here. Prime watched, stunned into silence at the size of him. Four wings arranged on his back in a perfect Insect Aspect throwback, black antennae, the obelisk formations on his back big enough to easily contain the mass of two mechs again.

But his colours...

They were Starscream's colours. Only one mech he knew had that nanite combination, that iridescent white, that molten-steel red, the Earth-sky blue like the high indigo sky on a hot summer.

"Skyfire," said Prime.

"You are Prime. I know you." High Autobot. Prime was wary. The worst Decepticons were always converts from another allegiance.

Skyfire crept close, and when he came to the open air of the balcony, stood up. Prime retreated to a safer distance. Over Skyfire's massive shoulder was an edifice of blocks and planes, a construction as big as the Celestial Temple, rendered in the same smoky obsidian as the altar-room. "I remember when they raised you from your living death, when you were paraded as a living descendent of Primus. Some mocked the Autobots for their desperation, but there were those that feared what you would become."

Prime moved slowly, away from the balcony's ledge, finding all the places he could spring, take shelter, use as diversions or cover.

"And what did you believe I would become?"

"A Dark Prime. A true descendent of Nemesis Prime, Nova's terrible parent. A creature of No-Spark."

_Keep him talking,_ thought Prime. _If you have to move, do it mid-sentence._

But what Skyfire said next froze him.

"Did it hurt," said Skyfire, "when they pulled the Matrix out of you for display?"

Energy pulsed along his sword-arm. _Danger_, his systems screamed at him. _Danger!_

"Your intel is wrong."

"My eyes are not wrong. I saw you. They made you stand, as you do now, with your chest open. Half of me was glad it caused you such humiliation, but the other half..." he trailed off, and his great, pale face became sad.

"How would a Decepticon know what goes on in the Celestial Temple?"

"Haven't you worked it out yet? We were invited in. You were an abhorrence to Autobot and Decepticon alike. It was an opportunity to kill you. And it."

Prime's hand went to his chest of its own accord, reaching back through time to protect himself.

Skyfire looked out across the patchwork ocean. "You were in such danger all your life, you were humbled by all those around you, yet you stood with such pride despite your agony. And I knew then that the sacred spirit of Primus was in you, and that I could not carry out my orders." Rueful smile. "I exiled myself, here." He turned his back on Prime. "So you see. I am no danger to you."

He retracted his sword, conflicted, not knowing where to start. Rare of him to be so indecisive. "Where are my companions?"

* * *

Skyfire took him to a big hall, a meeting place large enough to accommodate easily two hundred mechs. It whistled with emptiness. The only tracks to obscure the chemical ash belonged to Skyfire's feet.

"This site dates from the time of Prima, from the time of the warlords," Skyfire said, as genial as any host who had invited friends. "This is perhaps their furthest outpost, a palace made for a Queen. I doubt she ever saw it, though. Wait here."

Left alone, Prime paced the hallway impatiently. Empty chandeliers rocked back and forth from the gas-giant's continual tidal pull. This table - had Starscream ever sat here, across from Skyfire, eaten energon with him? Had they spoken words of affection? Had Skyfire taken him here, in lust, or a deeper, older friendship?

It was not long before Skyfire returned with his crew. They were not without injury. Jazz favoured one leg. Perceptor was grazed along his chest, the colour nanites burnt away. Mirage and Astroscope seemed whole enough, although they both had the wary look of being well out of their depth.

"Prime," exclaimed Jazz upon seeing him. "Thank Primus you're all right. You've recovered so quickly." Jazz grabbed Prime's wrist and hug-bumped his shoulder in a gesture of welcome, but really to whisper a surreptitious, "What is this Primus-forsaken place?"

"Mechs heal quickly here," said Skyfire. "The atmosphere, its constituents. I've long believed our race may have evolved from an environment much like this."

Jazz frowned, appalled at such Decepticon thinking, but behind him Perceptor was nodding, optics bright. Of course, these were science-bots. They would welcome such thoughts.

"I have lived here for a long time," Skyfire continued. High Autobot language made his voice restrained and dainty, incongruous to his size. "Alone. Long enough to forget about Decepticons and Autobots."

Prime had so many questions. How long had he been offline? How close had Skyfire come to his people? How close were you to Starscream?

Mirage stood at a distance, uncomfortable. A lone mech he might have been, but Skyfire was still attentive to the body-language between them. "You do not greet your Consort?"

"He's..." started Prime, before he was aware of a high, nauseating tension sparking about the hall, Jazz and Perceptor staring at him, narrowband binary comms. Something had happened. Some lie had been told to guarantee safety.

Prime grimaced behind his mask, said, "You understand, that to reveal a Consort endangers him."

Mirage pressed his mouth together at the underhanded dismissal, turned his head aside.

"Like I said," Skyfire murmured. "You are in no danger from me."

"I prefer privacy," said Prime tightly, "and besides, we have more pressing matters to attend to. Perceptor, have you shown him the name?"

Perceptor hesitated, before pulling from a cavity at his elbow the scrap of plastic. He held it out to Skyfire, who collected in with a meticulous gesture.

"This is your name?" Perceptor pressed his hands together, anxious. "It's your name, yes?"

Skyfire's shoulders sagged ever so slightly. "In the God Soldier dialect. Yes."

Prime exchanged a worried look with Perceptor. Skyfire gazed at the plastic scrap as if his memories were imprinted on it.

"You know the mech who wrote that," Perceptor pressed, when the silence stretched on. "You know him, don't you?"

"A long time ago." An expression of regret and some deep pain. "Oh, I knew him."

"Starscream."

Startled, Skyfire dropped the plate.

"Ah," he said. "Him." He picked the plate up again, gripped it in his fist.

Perceptor came forward insistent. "You knew Starscream, didn't you? You were his friend."

Skyfire laid the engraved plate on the table, tapped it with a finger, said almost absently, "Did he tell you that?"

Prime's shoulders were hurting from the strain he held himself in. He wanted to run forward, shake the mech, demand that he tell everything he knew. "No. But he's...he was..." Could barely vocalise it. "Something happened. He wrote this name. Your name."

_Who were you Skyfire? Who were you to Starscream?_

"Star's still alive?" Something about Skyfire's desperate, hopeful look made Prime ping with jealousy. He didn't want anyone to say Star's name like that, with such longing.

Jazz picked up on the strange currencies between the two mechs and stepped in. "We're not sure. He had...has...been living with us for a while-"

"As an Autobot?"

"Yes."

"I would never have imagined it."

"There were some...developments," said Jazz, with a nervous glance at Prime. "He was with us, but he was taken away, leaving only this."

Skyfire's optics skittered over the plastic scrap. "And for this you came to see me?"

Prime nodded helplessly.

Skyfire sighed, shook his head. "I don't know where this is supposed to end, this journey of yours. Well, or with a tragic revelation."

"What do you mean?"

"Starscream never knew High Autobot language beyond a few spoken words. I was never able to teach it to him, no matter how I tried. That script? The hand-scoring. It belongs to Megatron."

"Megatron?" croaked Perceptor. "These are not Starscream's words?"

Skyfire shook his head. "If you found this, like you say...Megatron would have written it for you to find."

* * *

tbc


	23. Traditions

Twenty-three: Traditions

* * *

"Amazing planet," said Mirage. "Amazing. Did you know you can drink the liquid straight out of the lake? It's high-octane hydrocarbon...you wouldn't even need energon."

Jazz grumbled, "Moon, technically," but Mirage was unquestionably cheerful despite being corrected, despite being here, a thousand million light years from Earth. Why wouldn't he be? Megatron had planned for them to come, a time-wasting excursion while Starscream was taken away and executed. There were no cries for help, no last-ditch pleas written on a plastic scrap, nothing. What had been in exercise in self-harm had warped into something else entirely.

"Doesn't it bother you we might not get back?" Jazz grumbled at him. "It'll be a long time before Prowl can requisition a Cybertronian ship...if he has the status left after letting us go."

"At least we're not going to starve." Mirage let the nitrogenous air circulate through his systems, chest visibly expanding. "And this atmosphere!"

"Stuck in friggin' Xanadu."

Perceptor nodded. "That's the human name for this continent, you know?"

"I meant the poem," said Jazz in a low voice. "Kublai Khan sitting in his castle, not lettin' us go."

Prime left them to their argument, shifted on down the shore of the sea-lake until they were dark shapes in the chemical haze. Prime peered out across the smog of the variegated lake, the heavy and light elements in the liquid not quite mixing, and was reminded a human food dish he'd seen once. One of the early political functions, some antipasto laid out for visiting dignitaries. _Cold pressed olive oil, balsamic vinegar and artichoke hearts,_ the concierge had told a enthusiastic Jazz, who wanted to know all he could about human customs. _"Roasted green capsicums stuffed with feta, semi-dried tomatoes, the vine-leaf wrapped things are called dolmades. They're very tasty."_

Now Jazz didn't seem enthusiastic about anything much at all. He'd parked himself on a rough diamond the size of a small car, arms folded, and continued to exchange sharp words with Mirage.

Perceptor and Astroscope were trying to make the best of a bad situation, moving down the shore, Perceptor popping in and out of his microscope function while Astroscope stuffed Titan sand into his specimen tray.

They were not prisoners, but neither had Skyfire been much help in getting them off the moon. He had waved off requests to fix the ship - broken beyond repair, he said, and he was a life scientist, not a mechanical one. Showed them his large, unmarked hands, the steady way he held them, so precise. Then in a fit of guilty hospitality he had escorted them all to separate rooms for recharge, massive chambers laced with methane frost, fit for a Senator, or even a Warlord.

To Prime and Mirage he had shown a single level carved from black ice. The sweeping expanse was abutted with successive concentric terraces descending into a necklace of mineral springs.

They were palatial surrounds meant for Prima, Primon's daughter, Empress Prime. The walls were resplendent with etched murals, explicit renderings of spark-sharing and bodysex. A God Soldier coupled with an Insect Caste Senator - an explicit act of miscegenation, but meant to arouse and delight. This was no ordinary recharge room. Prime noted the doorway from which pleasure-slaves and servants would be taken to and from their quarters, was affronted by the casual service to a single mech's desires.

"I wonder sometimes if Prima had taken Alpha Duex here." Skyfire had glanced shyly at Mirage, noting the Alpha-caste marks on him. "She may have carried the protoflesh of Alpha Prime within her, while bathing in these very terraces. It seems fitting they should be used again for a Prime."

"Hmm," murmured Prime between clenched jaws. The erotica on the walls disturbed him, made him ache again, roused up that hurt and longing. There was no love on the walls, just the impersonal and often non-consensual couplings of mechs, but his neglected body responded to them, insistent.

"It is probably not as impressive as the Sapphire Berth of Prime in the Temple, though."

"I wouldn't know," said Prime, tightly. "After Nova's passing the doors were welded shut to signify the end of the Prime lineage."

Skyfire gave him a curious look.

Prime decided that recharge could wait, cornered Jazz when the large mech was occupied in showing Mirage around the terraces.

"Tell me again why I'm supposed to say Mirage is my Consort?"

Jazz shook his head, defeated. "Skyfire wasn't friendly when we met him. Not friendly at all. He thought we'd damaged you - uh - until Mirage said he was your Consort and-"

"What?"

"He said he was Prime Consort. He opened his spark, volunteered information we could never have given without compromise. Alpha codes are secure, as unbreakable as Prime codes."

"You should have made Perceptor do it, for Primus' sake! I could deal with that."

"And what? What if that giant picks up what you or Percy really feel for Starscream?" His voice lowered, "Especially you?"

"You think I care? You think I want to hide it any more? Star's _dead because of me._"

A blast-smear across Jazz's visor made him look like he was wincing.

"He kept us prisoner, while we waited for you to wake. Astroscope's mass-neutral - he can transform smaller or larger. He did some reconnaissance for us, checked this place out." Jazz had looked about, made sure that Mirage and Skyfire were still kept busy with one another. "He found something."

Prime didn't know whether he wanted to know anything here. His presence was _wrong_, an entrapment of revelations. Jazz didn't wait for him to give a nod to continue, but did so anyway.

"He found a room, a big laboratory in one of the basement sections. At the shores of an underground lake. Stasis chambers. Some of them were filled...with, oh Primus, protoforms. Seeker protoforms. Easily a dozen, Astroscope said. Full maturity, and the equipment to make many more. All clones from one individual. He's got a regular factory going on there."

Prime was speechless for a moment. Thought of Thundercracker, and Skywarp, Starscream's brothers. "Were any of them alive?"

"No, all in stasis. Viable? He didn't stay long enough to find out. Astroscope says that they might be getting copy-loss, they looked kind of...melted."

He needed to ask. "Is Skyfire their parent?"

"I don't know. But the seeker design has a God Soldier base, and Skyfire's closer to an Omega Guardian and Insect half-caste, if anything."

"That's no reason..."

"He's mass sharing with them."

"You mean one is alive...?"

Jazz stamped his foot. "No, they're in stasis. Stasis! Prime, I'm trying to be as delicate as I can here, but that is one slagged-up crazy obsessive 'bot who is spilling himself into Starscream simulacra and you want to let him know that you were his _lover?_ Prime, we're _marooned_ here. We haven't even got a radio. How will he react if he finds out how close you were to Starscream? He might have killed you while you slept. For all that Mirage is, that little lie has probably saved us all."

* * *

"There might be a storm soon. We need to go back inside."

Prime glanced over his shoulder. Skyfire stood behind him, the cognac light drenching his white body with a sick shade of yellow. He wondered how long Skyfire had been standing there, watching him while he stared despondently out over the Titan ocean. Mirage had not dared to come close. Prime wondered if their host worked out their necessary deception.

"You're very good at sneaking around for such a large mech."

"I learnt how to hide in plain sight, early on in my life."

"Because you're so large? Because you'd be throttled to automaton status?"

"Yes."

A float of bituminous pumice had wedged itself in the lake shore. Prime watched as a scarab-thing danced towards it, tore a barnacle-thing off the side, sent the aerated stone scudding away.

"I repealed that law. It was my first act as an empowered Prime."

Skyfire ran a nervous hand over his expressive antennae, stilling their agitated wave. There was a conversation brewing between them, and Prime knew it would not be long before they would have to speak truths.

"The Senators must have fought you over that law. I remember you were little more than an automaton to them."

Prime returned to the ocean. The choppy liquid had made debris rise to the surface. Cryovolcanic ice floes clinked together. "They could not deny me the request. After I won the Iacon-Front battle against Megatron, re-secured the Temple...things changed for me."

He heaved a breath, the memory still strong. He had lost many friends during that conflict to win back the Golden City. The Elders had sent him there to die, one last glorious battle for the Matrix, for the Autobot Race. If both were to be extinguished, it was to be done in the honour of war, not the shabby acts of neglect or assassination.

They had been wrong about him. He had called on strength and talents from the infraspace of his body-memory. Power had flowed through him. Even the Matrix, hated thing, even it granted him prescience and fortitude. Mortally wounded he had faced Megatron, the larger, stronger mech, had fought him and won. The Autobot armies, demoralised for so long, had at last achieved victory. They'd howled in unison. "Prime," they shouted. "Prime!"

He had returned from the battlefield knowing that he could never be what the Elders wanted, a mere placeholder, life support. So much had changed since the day he had limped into the Temple, a conqueror, as much a warrior as Alpha Duex, whose life-force still existed like a curious code in his circuits. In one hand he had dragged the body of Megatron's lieutenant - the hated half-insect, Infest - and in the other the barrel of Megatron's alt-mode. Not a few Senators saw in him the likeness of Vector Prime with the crown and mace of his station, but he with a corpse and a weapon instead. _He may be the Prime we have waited for._ Prime had dumped both at Xaaron's feet and claimed the Warlord's First Right of Prime.

He repeated to Skyfire the words he had said, back then. Time and memory made them echo. "The Warlord tradition gives me one request that cannot be argued with. One order that must be followed. An ancient tradition. My bounty and spoil."

"So...given an unarguable request - you asked for the rights of others." Skyfire's antennae oscillated in astonishment. "Impressive."

"There was nothing I wanted for myself."

"You must have wanted something - no mech can be that self-sacrificing."

"I already had what I wanted - the leadership and respect of my people. I won that, on the battlefield. I did not need to have it handed to me, like some begrudged gift."

"It seems a reduced kind of life. Didn't you have any great desire or passion for anything? Wealth, knowledge? Another mech as your slave? I remember Nova Prime ordered several. He had quite a predilection for gladiatormechs." Skyfire bent in close. "I don't detect any great yearning between you and your blue Consort, any great love."

"You speaking from experience, Skyfire?"

He'd been alone too long to lie. "Yes." Skyfire shuffled nervous feet. On the far side of the hydrocarbon lake the orange clouds were traced in lightening-strike pink for a second. They became smeared, as rain begin to fall. Prime was reminded of a saying Carly had. _On Neptune, it rains diamonds._

Skyfire's storm was on approach. "How did he die?"

Prime physically recoiled, and Skyfire saw it. Why did they have to go to that emotional place? Easier to talk about laws and policies. "Megatron."

"Ah..." Skyfire looked up, sideways, murmured words in a clumsy language, unfamiliar with grief. Then, "Did you know him well?"

"Well enough." Then, "It was difficult. Decepticons are so different from us."

"Was he your prisoner?"

"At first."

"And then was not...?"

Mirage had approached. Prime wanted to yell at him, tell him to go back to the lakeside, but to do that was to alert Skyfire, and the mech kept talking saying in his quiet, resigned voice, "Yes, he would not have stayed a prisoner long."

Jazz was alerted to trouble, stood up, growling Mirage's name.

"Wait Jazz, Skyfire is going to tell us about our friend Starscream."

Mirage sounded so genuine that it made matters worse. The rain came then, a gasoline-scented shower that made then all scramble for the shelter of the ice and stone palace.

The rain fell in massive sheets of atmosphere-cracked petroleum. Every once in a while a lightning flash would ignite the aromatics, send a blue sprite of flame skywards, but other than that it was a relentless pour, coursing sheets of liquid ethane off the eaves and gutters, across the terraces and balconies, and down into an underground lake whose presence manifested in gurgles and bubbles.

"First rain of the Sweet season. After a trimara, the lake will be clear, almost pure hydrocarbon."

Perceptor did a quick calculation based on Titan's rotation, guessed that the trimara for Titan to be about a month and a half, Earth time.

"It's time for energon. Join me, please," said Skyfire.

"We really should be recharging," said Jazz.

"Oh no - I insist."

"He insists," Astroscope muttered in binary Autobot.

"No," said Prime, "I just want to rest."

Jazz put his hand on Prime's arm, his fingers finding the sensor spots. "You need to eat, Optimus," he said quietly. "More than recharge." A burst of internal-comms, a private message on such a narrow band it came through scratched and warped. _"Don't let it worry you what Skyfire says, or what he says in front of Mirage. You know what you shared with Star. You knew him, and nobody can take that away."_

Prime nodded at Jazz, his old and good friend. "_Prowl is lucky to have you._"

"_You better remind him of that! Often!_"

Affection towards Jazz then, and it was a relief to feel something for another mech that was not anger or annoyance or bewilderment or worst of all, nothing. Prime clung to that shred of emotion even through regret. He was not certain if he would ever get a chance to tell Prowl anything.

Skyfire loped on ahead. At a loss of anywhere else to go, they followed him through the long central nave of the castle, to a smaller, more intimate dining hall that looked out across the rain-drenched sea-lake.

Skyfire joined them at the head of the table, settled in one of the two large seats that would have contained the Omega Guardians, the massive - and extinct - race of warrior-escorts. He bid Prime to sit in the other Guardian seat, Prima's throne too small for his frame.

Skyfire laid out processed white energon, invited them to eat. It was of an almost incomparable quality. Prime ate a small amount, wary of becoming insensible.

The walls were busy with the same Gilgamech allegories from the Celestial Temple, the old stories. A different artist had scribed the stone, a wilder, more vivid style. One large panel had Primon fighting a giant Insect Lord, and in another, he was raised up on a throne and shield by enslaved insects, antennae seeming to dance in the reflected gas-jets.

"Was Starscream your lover, Lord Skyfire?" asked Mirage, blue Autobot eyes clear and guileless.

"Mirage," hissed Jazz.

Mirage tipped up his head. The Alpha in him would not be cowed.

Perceptor looked to Prime, pleading, waiting for him to say something to put Mirage in his place. But what was his place? What was Prime's place anymore? Perhaps no less an exile than Skyfire.

Skyfire looked at them all. Not a stupid mech, not throttled.

"I will say yes, for it was impossible to resist him if he had it in mind to win you. He knew how to make a mech fall in love with him."

Prime stared at his barely touched energon. Perceptor looked stricken. Jazz pressed his foot against Prime's.

"I know he would have seduced one of your soldiers. I know it would have been hard for you, Prime, to watch as one of your own was enthralled by him. You say he was a prisoner, and then he was not...which suggests to me he choose well." Deep sigh. "Starscream's survival instincts were as keen as his ambition."

Mirage said, "You are right. This is the mech we knew."

Skyfire's fists clenched momentarily, then released in surrender. "I should not blame any of you, or feel jealousy. Starscream never loved anything in all his life. All he loved was power."

Prime felt his protoflesh warp and pull. He wanted to be out of here. He wanted to be alone. He wanted not to have his memories corrupted so, Starscream's body, his whispered words.

_They were real. There was no artifice in them. _Desperate thoughts. The thunder growled.

"You were lucky, Prime," Skyfire went on, "to have already been bonded. You would have represented a useful tool to him."

"Yes," said Mirage, "He was lucky," and reached over and laid his hand over Prime's own, and Prime was glad for his battle-mask, for under it his mouth was twisted into a metal-shear, a wound-gash of hate and despair.

* * *

Solarstar said, "The paint can't be that annoying, surely."

He stopped his fidgeting, glanced sideways at a reflection on a polished scrap of automaton fuselage.

"It's my brother's colour."

"You have a brother?"

"Two." Starscream stood up. Couldn't sit still. His wings ached.

Solarstar nodded, sensing Starscream's agitation and saying no more on the matter. Beyond a ragged scrap of curtain, Lectra, the crippled barge-loader and another Oracle were having a complicated argument. Elita One was condescending and officious, flapping away her young acolyte with her jig-saw arms, while her crippled servant chirped and pleaded.

"Do you know what they're saying?" whispered Solarstar.

"What makes you think I know?" Starscream snapped, roused into anger now. "They're speaking in high Autobot."

"Didn't Prime speak to you in that language? It's his native tongue, the Prime's language. Language of poets and thieves."

Starscream glared at Solar, at his clucking, knowing words. Of course Prime had spoken to him in high Autobot, as many of the Senators and clergy did to Solarstar when they shouted in overload. Curse words mostly, but Prime had always tempered his language with murmurs of love.

_Love_

Starscream felt an acid rush of resentment for Solar's servicing of Prime, for Elita's prophecy. _Prime and Mirage, joined spark-to-spark_.

It had been a bodyblow. He wanted it not to be true. He wanted her to lie. But she was an Oracle, and she knew how to hurt him.

"I know 'Again' and 'Stay' and 'Please'," said Starscream, sullen. "And I know that phrase your client says to you - Prime says the same thing. But I cannot translate that, and besides, there's no surrender in any of them. Your Oracle wants to go somewhere, and the others disagree."

Lectra switched to Insect and screeched, "Mistress, they will kill you!"

That was that. They were fighting over a death mission.

In a sulk, Elita sent her retinue away. She attended to her clientele, the motley trickle of visitors to her door. Ranked a more common 'One' and not the 'Sacred Zero', Elita was still in possession of a marketable talent. She sold her prophecies, and for that she made her living here in the Pit.

The clients themselves were many and varied. The blade-headed 'bot wishing to hear the outcome of a business proposal (Elita's answer was sufficiently vague to be mysterious), the collapsing mech-thing who wanted secrets against a local tyrant (they sounded fairly accurate and truly prophetic, until the tyrant himself arrived wanting ways to control his unruly borough.)

At last she demanded rest and shooed the remaining crowd away.

Elita stood up, approached Starscream, hot blue optics suddenly indignant, as if looking at him made her faulty memory come to life.

"I sell my visions for black energon and bluecake barge-scrapings," she sneered at him. "You see what I must do?"

"Mistress..." the crab-loader plucked at her ragged hem nervously.

"Leave me Finality, I wish to talk to this mech who looks at me with such _privilege_."

The crab-loader's stalked eyes glared at Starscream with snobbish odium before retiring behind the curtain.

"Star-" started Solarstar, before Elita One raised her mantis claw at him.

"Be silent, little whore. I want to see what it is that interrupts my visions so!"

Concerned, Solarstar glanced at Starscream.

Elita sat on the shiny carapace of an automaton's thorax, lit a small energon pipe and looked him over. "So, now that you know Prime has found another, how does that make you feel?"

He met her cold diode gaze. "Nothing."

"You don't think of them together, spark to spark? This Mirage giving Prime what you never did?"

Starscream clenched his jaws, would not let her humiliate him into any display of hurt. "He meant nothing to me, he was a means to my survival, that was all."

A strange expression from her, either proven right - or proven a challenge, hard to tell with such a baffling tessellation of pieces that made up her face.

"Ah. Of course, you Decepticons have your names for him. You thought yourself clever, making the Prime love you despite the allegiance marks on you. Kept your spark from him, so he would not know your true deception."

"Don't try to read me, _Oracle_." Starscream spat at her. "Others have tried and failed."

"Ha!" she crowed, "You and your God Soldier tricks. Then let me guess, you lay with Prime for more than survival. For power maybe, to win some political favour? It must have been a culmination of all your deceits and machinations when he asked you to be Consort!"

"At least I was asked!"

"You think I wasn't asked? _You think I wasn't asked?_" Her cry rose to a scream, "My visions told me to say no! The same visions that made Nova and Paraselene couple, and bring about the end of the pure Prime lineage? My false visions, that bring a scheming Decepticon _whore_ to my compound, full of sham and trickery towards Prime?"

Elita grabbed him, forcefully, whispering the stasis belt codes so that he was frozen again. Solarstar was stilled equally, made squawking cicada-noises from his corner.

She was a big mech, Elita, taller than Starscream, a reborn's ranginess and unnatural strength. He was tipped backwards, fell hard, pain sensors registered from his exoskeleton. Her serrated mantis-claw caught Starscream's throat, while her other hand pushed between Starscream's legs. She stripped back the armour with hooked fingers. No fumbling. She knew what she wanted.

Starscream howled at the intrusion, tried to shake her off, but the belt and her strength were too much for him. Elita worked her fingers past his armour and into the core of him. His protoflesh was invaded by sharp digits, testing the give and response of the dark-matter within, an awful violation. She meant to punish him...

_Don't let her know. If she knows than she has power over you._

"Stop," he hissed. He meant it to come out with threat, but with his head tipped back, blade-arm at his neck it came out beseeching.

Her face fell alongside his, she laid her weight along his length. Her hand worked deeper and was no longer a hand, but the flow of weight and mass and transmuted substance, space manipulated in the only way an Oracle could manipulate space. The intimacy was worse than being injured.

_"Ah Starscream, has he lain thus with you? Has he called to you in overload, your name, the name of Primus? Was this what you sought, to see him debase himself before you?"_

He cursed her in Decepticon, in the darkest of Insect tongues, and she only laughed at him. Another word ramped up the stasis controls so that his optics winked out and he was in darkness. Elita bent her mouth close to his audio receptors and whispered...

...whispered the mysterious words in high Autobot that Optimus would say on overload. The verses that Optimus would weep and sob while his body shook and he spilt silver into Starscream's body like an ice-burn of erotic sensation, when he screamed the name of his god, _Primus, Primus._ Starscream knew that sing-song scatter of code and colour, the final thrust of weight into his protoflesh, the loss of control, the reward of delight.

His body betrayed him, jerked around the mass, the weight on his abdomen, inside him, as heavy as Optimus, the cyberemones of Optimus, the thought of Solarstar writhing with his client, and Starscream's wrenching necessity to have Prime with him the same way, Prime's heft and bulk between his thighs in both certainty and desperation, Prime's gentle mouth on his own, the taste of him, his overloaded words...

Unable to stop himself Starscream cried out the name of Prime. Cried it to darkness and time.

He'd been so pent up with hopelessness and yearning, the trial of a wish granted and taken away again, his body destroyed and rebuilt that this not-Optimus, this simulacra, lurched him into a painful overload and he clutched (Optimus) to him, his arms across (Optimus') back, his body shaking as electricity poured through him like living energon light.

Then the vision was over.

The mantis claw was removed from his throat, Elita's hand returning to its anthromorphic shape, Starscream sitting in a smear of pink-tinged puddle of iridescence, shamed beyond speech.

He pushed Elita away, gasping at the strength it took to override the stasis belt.

Elita stayed where she was, a picture of confusion. Starscream couldn't read her. Couldn't. Expected her to gloat at him, mock his weakness. Or at the very least be angry at his deceit, telling her that he didn't feel anything for Prime, when in truth even Prime's voice could impel him to overload.

He pressed his knees together, armour still open, his confused body wondering where the rest of the post-overload ministrations were, the strokes and kisses and murmurs that everything was fine now, easing him down from that terrible emotional peak. The moat outside the compound gurgled. The night-time sounds of the Pit took on a complex, layered quality.

Elita shook Star's iridescence from her fingers. "I was right, about one thing."

She released Solarstar, who ran to Starscream, wrapped his arms around his shoulders, crooning in Decepticon plaintalk. The courtesan was experienced with young attachments to Tesselax's harem, was experienced in comforting the newly broken. Starscream was hardly inexperienced. He'd been taken without consent before. But he did not shrug him off.

Finality scuttled in again, alerted by the commotion.

"My lady?"

"We are all right, Finality," said Elita. Despondency weighted her voice. She picked herself off the floor, drew her ragged cloak around her.

"What has he done to you?" Finality snapped his claw-stumps at Starscream.

Elita huffed a sigh. "I had a view of myself Finality. An Oracle without vision. Blinded and old. And I expected him to prove it."

"My lady?"

"Perhaps my sight is not completely gone from me." She wheeled on Starscream. "Those words. Optimus said them to you upon overload."

"Rust you!"

She lunged at him. "This is no time for games, no one-upmanship on who held the Prime in thrall! He said those words to you, said them so they mirrored your culmination, your overload. Am I right? _Am I right?_"

"Yes," Star growled in hate. "He said them to me."

"What do they mean? Tell me!"

"I don't know! Something in your cursed Autobot tongue!" Starscream was indignant. He spoke them again, as phonetically as he could, and Elita winced.

"You do not know?"

"I never asked. It never seemed appropriate at the time."

She fell back, diminished almost, a Queen at the end of her reign.

"It's from the Gilgamech Codex. From the song of Primus' surrender to Unicron. _I give myself to you. All that I am, I allow you inside me, I give you mastery over my life..._the Thaumaturgie sing it when they call down the new Prime, in the sacred berth-chambers, the star-Sapphire Berth."

"You speak of it like it was sacred." Starscream said with wounded pride. "But the Senators say such a thing in their language when they couple with their slaves."

"No." She was serious now. "Those words were never spoken, never taught. After Nova passed, that part of the Codex was redacted from all the historical and mythological records. The walls are scrubbed clean. In fact, the only place you'll hear of the taking of Primus by Unicron is here, in the depths of the Pit. The legend of the Spill reminds us of Primus' suffering, as they suffer, god and mortal together."

"You tell me this now?"

"I say this, because I am never wrong! They cast me out from the Temple when I was wrong about Nova, about the Prime who was supposed to be budded from the God Soldier, but I am never wrong! And Optimus - he should not know those words! They were erased from our history, long before he was made. If he knows them...then..." Her face took on exultation that was almost savage, and a shadow of her former beauty passed across her face. "Then the line of Prime is not broken. He may be able to access the Matrix after all."

"Rust you and your dead god!"

"You will come with me! You and I will prove them wrong, that Primus still lives!"

"My Lady!" pleaded Finality, terrified that his mistress has succumbed to her ultimate madness.

She kicked him aside. "Enough! I have had enough, of living in this place of ruinous pain, feeding the scraps of my talent to rusted Empties! I will prove my visions correct! I will take him to the source, to the Celestial Temple itself."

* * *

TBC


	24. Reclamation

...

Someone was singing in the upper reaches, words falling down the deep well of the Pit like phoneme rain. Far away, a prophet's song in the shattered darkness, static wail like a entreaty to their dying god. Something was happening on the sun-side of the planet, something that was moving in the cyberemones, scraps of data, undercurrents of communication. A sliver of insect-tongue, sung, _My spark searches for him, and he is not with me..._

Not a love song. A war-song, a casting aside of an old love so that the singer could commit himself to blind hate and battle, death without thought.

"Perhaps the Prime has died," said Lectra, seriously. A lone diode outlined her face in harsh blue. "Can you feel it? The Pit is alive tonight. On edge. I can smell plasma-trails, the war machine."

Elita shook her head. Regal and hideous, her talents accessed present portals as well as future ones.

"We will all know if the Matrix of Leadership has been removed. Primus echoes in all of us...even for those who don't believe." Her optics met Starscream and Solarstar's briefly, before she loped away, towards the ant-crawl of the autophage platforms.

Starscream followed Elita's lead. He waited until his balance was secured before stepping up onto a moving platform. He felt the shake and tremble of the anti-gravity nanite-structures beneath, adjusting to his weight. Solarstar reached out a hand, and Starscream pulled the smaller mech alongside him. Ahead, Elita had claimed a platform for herself, made Lectra and Finality ride behind.

Riding architecture as old as Primus himself, they began to climb.

Energon processors dotted the lee sides of the Pit, a thousand burning metal flowers. Tendrils of autologous diodes colonised long strands of ripped and rusted debris. A few starving Empties monkey clung to the carbon-nanotube cables, grabbed handfuls of diodes and stuffed the glowing handfuls between steadily working jaws.

The dumb platforms moved them higher and higher, surfacing from a dense ocean to a Cybertronian night.

"Funny way of keeping us safe," muttered Starscream. For want of space and wingspan, Solarstar sat at his feet, legs curled up under him.

Solarstar jutted his chin out towards the penumbra where the daylight began, ominous clouds, the green sprites of plasma cannon discharges.

"They're fighting on the sun-side. You need to be there, among our people, leading them."

Starscream's face twisted. "Elita is right. I have come delivered to her as a whore, and I will be returning as one."

Solarstar disagreed vehemently. "Keep remembering what your Generals said. They need you."

Starscream didn't reply. His own clenched jaws hurt him. Elita had exposed his weakness as easily as a surgical laser couple peel apart an exoskeleton. Starscream had not been entirely convinced when Elita exhorted him to go to the Celestial Temple. He would have been safer throwing himself before Megatron's mercy, then in the enemy's heart.

But Elita had come close, whispering her calculating words. She was Starscream's size, but fragile with age and rebuilding. "_I know what you want. You want to see him again before he is taken from you..."_

_"Don't presume-"_

_"You want to be reunited with your people and-"_ low, knowing look, "_-you wish to see Megatron destroyed. This is the disease that infects your spark more than any other thing."_

_"Anyone could know that."_

_"But I am an Oracle, and I know it with an intimacy others could never." _

Starscream hadn't moved. He sized her up, hated her for knowing him when nobody had understood him at all. Not even Optimus. She was like a loose electrical conduit in a storm, lashing with mad guesses and wrong logic, but when the ends connected...

"_These things can come to pass," _Elita's voice had been silky. Machiavellian tones for an individual well versed in manipulation and court intrigue. _"If you wish them."_

So here he was, the Autophage trail ending at a high-road, the relatively recent construction interrupting that most ancient of pathways. The Autophages fell against the pillars like a clutter of blind things hitting a wall, went into stasis, fell swirling and spiralling back into the Pit like torn wings.

The high road curved as smooth as a giant animal's rib-bone over the shantytowns and hovels at the lip of the Pit, stretching over the chiaroscuro-patched arrondissement of Dead End and then towards a bright river of light. A main road. Further towards the west, illuminated against the greenish glow of the horizon, was the shattered vertebrae skyline of the city of Vos. The old Scientist's city, Starscream's birth-home.

"So, what do we do now?" said Starscream, sullen with fear and memories and the insistent buzzing of his stasis belt. He looked at Elita with her puzzle-skin and claw-less Finality, and was aware of his own wings, still not of a size. Their transformative abilities were gone. They could not take on the shape of the Autophages, could not drive the road in disguise. "How are we supposed to get to the Temple from here?"

"Wait," said Elita, and she sat cross-legged by the roadside, budda-patient. Finality and Lectra might have been as impatient as Starscream, but they hid it in attendance to their mistress, adjusting her cloak, picking grains of dust from her shoulders.

There was nothing else to do but wait, here in plain sight, Pit-stained and stinking of black energon. Starscream resigned himself to being blasted any micro-cycle now, by an Autobot clean-patrol looking for shambling Empties, thieving and causing trouble.

After an indeterminable time, the road began to vibrate slightly, and with his far-sight Starscream saw a huge pair of wheeled mechanica trundling down the carbon surface. Emblazoned on their sides were the louring red face of Alpha Prime.

"Autobots!"

Elita grabbed his arm. "Wait!"

"It they find us, we're dead!"

Lectra clung to Elita and implored, "He is right, my lady. We are vulnerable here."

But Elita would not be moved and Starscream despaired - of all that he had been through, he was to die weaponless on a deserted dark-side road.

The Elita waited on the vehicles approach, and Starscream slowly began to realise that the pair were not changing their speed even though they were well within radar and visual sight range, just lumbered on like dumb machines.

Solarstar cried out, "Autophages! This is an Autophage pathway!

"Why the Autobot symbol?" asked Starscream.

"The high-road Autophages are sacred to Primus," replied Elita as she rose to her feet. They cannot be touched or moved or used for scrap. The red glyph is Primus' color." A low tone. "Optimus has been the only one of the Prime line to be colored so."

"So, it makes sense. Decoys." Starscream said.

"Ah Decepticon, you have no sense of the mysteries of faith. Now, follow my lead, these big Children of Primus will be our transport to the Temple."

Elita grabbed Starscream around his waist and slung him forward as the machine trundled past.

He caught the leading edge, managed to scrabble around to the rear. Elita joined him, her Mantis-arm hooked into the autophage's head

Behind him, their companions hand managed to clamber aboard the other unit, but it was smaller, of a different design. Star knew, all of a sudden, that this was to be a parting of the ways.

Elita raised a hand in sorrow and farewell, before digging her claw deeper into the 'phage's head. Starscream barely had time to cling on before the wheels kicked up smoke and silicon, and they careened down the high road as if in the final seconds before flight.

* * *

He hadn't slept, not really, for such a long time, and with the abundance of white energon and the rich atmosphere, Prime's body rebelled. Exhaustion weighted his limbs. His spark dimmed. To process energon, one needed to recharge, to shut down everything and reroute mechanical processes into biochemical ones, metabolise like an organic might.

Jazz, ever watchful said to Skyfire in High Autobot, "We thank you for your hospitality. But it's time for us to retire."

Prime stood up. His legs seemed too weak to hold him. More than just exhaustion. Betrayal, regret. The endless replay of Mirage's noble Alpha face, his expression saying _didn't I tell you so?_ Starscream's perfect memory was being eroded to rust and filth. It was worse than a death.

Skyfire nodded his great head, his sad, deep eyes blinking in empathy, as always. "I too have things to take care of. Please excuse me if I do not escort you to your rooms. There are experiments that need my attending."

With a quirk of regret Perceptor watched their host go, before leaning over the table at Astroscope. "Can you imagine the things he's been able to do here? Alone, with all the time in the world?"

"I've seen some of them," replied Astroscope glumly, before flickering his attention at Prime.

"Well, _I_ certainly could use some rest, too," announced Mirage, stretching.

Jazz stood up, pushed him down with his hand, bent in close and hissed something. Prime only heard, "...my room."

"But..."

Jazz's fingers found the joint. Pressed in. Mirage pulled away with a snarl of defeat. "Okay, okay. Quit it."

Chastised, Mirage trailed after them, found the quarters assigned to Jazz and locked himself behind the doors. Jazz accompanied him to the black-ice wonders of Prima's room.

Jazz whistled, human-like, upon entering through the beaded colonnades and onto the expanse of the Prime berthchambers. It was twice as large in all dimensions than the hangar in the Ark. The bed was constructed from a black quartz geode, if not for the poly-gel pad, you could imagine it to be some terrible kind of torture device, or, like the humans would believe, an egg for monsters.

"Massive..." murmured Jazz. "But then Alpha Duex was big, wasn't he?"

Prime shrugged. The memories were there, but he cared not to access them too deeply. Prima had tortured her slave-lover for a Cybertron millennium before killing him, had been made gravid only by sheer accident. Mistaking massblood for mass-spill, perhaps. Aroused by the former, impregnated by the latter. He didn't want to think about how all Primes were born out of hate and degradation.

"I don't know if she ever came here," said Prime quietly. I have no memory of this place."

"Skyfire thinks..."

"Skyfire wishes perhaps. But this is a castle never occupied by a Prime." He approached the bed, pressed his fingers into the gel pad, knew that no-one had lain here.

"You sleep there." Jazz pointed out a raised section of black ice that contained slave-berths. "I'll be over here. I won't be far."

Prime shook his head, pulled back. "I don't want to be on that berth."

"It was made for a Prime."

"I'm not a Prime anymore, Jazz," he turned to his old friend. "I told you the truth, in the ship. I was only meant to keep the Matrix alive. I fought hard to be more than that...but. My strength is gone. I will lie on the slave berths with you."

"Optimus," Jazz breathed, but argued no further. Prime stood at the low platforms of the slave berths, chose the largest one and lay upon the thin gel with an exhale of tiredness. Jazz lay next to him, arms around his frame as best he could.

"Oh," said Jazz.

Prime turned his head. Jazz was looking up at the ceiling. High above, etched in perspective as if looking up from ground level, minarets and domes, corrosion-blue and must-white arabesques of circuitry, repeating patternwork.

"I know this city," murmured Jazz. "It's Vos, before the Decepticon War. It must have been magnificent."

"Yes, they say it was."

"Do you remember when we were there. The first time we braved the Decepticon defences?"

Prime managed a smile. He did not have to say much more. They had become separated from the phalanx, Jazz and his inexperienced leader, had huddled in the lee side of an exhumed No-Spark temple as molten fists of thermite had rained down upon them. Two scared mechs sharing sparks, and Prime had been too anxious to overload, and Jazz had been too awed by the Matrix to overload either, so they had just swapped fleeting memories with all the emotional nuances of data-chips.

Finished, Prime had said, "I'm going to fight him."

And Jazz had said, "You can't. Nobody can fight him and survive."

And Prime had touched Jazz's shoulder, drawn up his battlemask. "This is what I was made for," he had said, and had risen from the rubble, Autobot brand on his shoulder still raw and bleeding. A Prime. A Leader.

"It's so clear. That moment when you faced Megatron," Jazz covered his visor with his hand, recapturing the vision. "How can they try and replace that which we all saw, our leader taking on a tyrant, and winning?"

"I'll always be there." Prime tapped Jazz's chest with his finger, over his spark. It's what being a Matrix-holder is all about."

* * *

The rain stopped, sudden, and the silence waoke him.

Jazz made little snicker-snores. The bio-based vocaliser that gave him his gift of languages, tended to inadvertant noise during recharge. Prime sat up. The rain still pooled and flowed down the terraces. The hydrocarbon springs were overflowing. The gas-jets danced against the walls. An Omega Guardian, that extinct and ignoble race, dallied with some smaller mech. Unclear whether it was consent or rape.

As always, a sense of unease. Prime rose and stretched out the kinks, walked out onto the terrace, noticed the small path that unobtrusively led from one corner. A servant's path connecting Prima's rooms. He didn't know what impulse drove him, but he decided to follow the rude little trail, see where it led. Cut close to the battlements, there was barely enough room for him to stand. He edged his way along the cliff face, pulled his mass about, made his centre of gravity low.

At last there was a low entrance into the basements of the palace, little more than a rough tunnel not quite above the choppy reach of the sea-lake.

The walls and floor were burred and dull, not like the Temple, warn smooth and even by generations of mecha. Prime pushed light-nanites into his eyes and followed the tunnel deeper into the base of the castle. The atmosphere was warm and still. An odd odour came to him, complex and Cybertronian in origin.

Up ahead, a pearly blue light limned the walls like massblood. Prime knew what he was going to see before he did - he'd seen enough stasis chambers, remembered too well Jazz's story about Astroscope's find. But he had to see, needed to know.

The first chamber was almost too much to bear. Not because the creature inside it looked like Starscream, but because it didn't. Or at least, not like Starscream was supposed to look. Protoflesh and exoskeleton, melted together. Wings twisted into horned whorls of spiralated metaskeleton. The protoform in the next chamber was not much different, injured by the very forces of entropy and copy-loss. With mounting horror Prime counted at least five mutated protoforms before he reached a plain, steel-grey door. Not thinking, he pushed it open and came into another room, more stasis chambers, but these ones had been covered as if to preserve some modesty. Blue light leaked out from under black fabric.

Almost sick with apprehension he reached for one covering before he heard the slow, deliberate footfall of their host. Prime stilled, fingers snarled in asbestos and kevlar cloth.

He seriously considered confronting Skyfire, demand what was happening. But his sense told him that it was they who were the guests here. They should never have come. Skyfire could have killed them easily, left Prime to die. It was they who were the intruders here.

As the door opened Prime retreated to shadow, between two stasis vats. They were protoflesh-warm. Skyfire moved into the room with that same incongruous grace, His hands pressed each chamber surface with the same the reverence as a prophet might lay hands upon an icon, as the Thaumaturges did to the Matrix before enucleating it from Prime's chest. Discomforted, he drew further back.

Skyfire found the last chamber and slowly pulled off the fabric. It pooled in shimmery black at his feet. Prime stifled a gasp.

Prime remembered Thundercracker and Skywarp, knew what it was to see Starscream's brothers, to see mechs that looked like _him_. But they'd always had something unfinished about them, their pale faces, lost in either stupidity or hesitation. Not renowned as fighters.

But as the stasis fluid subsided the mech in the chamber was revealed. A perfectly executed God Soldier in Starscream's dimensions, as golden as if the Celestial Temple walls had come alive. Prime had to stifle a gasp.

Skyfire opened the stasis chamber, picked out the golden mech with utter tenderness, laid him out across the black-ice table like a sacrament. Big gentle hands tracing the clean lines of the golden body with veneration. Crimson optics stared blindly in Prime's direction. Stasis-locked, the interstices between life and death. Same dark God Soldier face as Star's, and Prime clung to the warm curve of his hiding-place, sick with loss.

With all care to their weight difference Skyfire palmed aside the golden seeker's knees, thumbed open the unresisting armature and fell into him. Their lovemaking - if it could be called that - was as deliberate as a fighter's form, that deliberate slow execution of martial moves. Had this been Starscream's introduction to mass-sharing? Skyfire's patience, the regal coupling of an experienced lover?

Prime watched, even though it hurt him, excised old wounds. There were so many questions. How then, had Starscream seen Prime's fumbling hurry? With a sinking shame Prime recalled all those times he'd half-way attacked Star, without thought or finesse, a source of pleasure and Prime he'd been, and hungry, hungry, Prime had never been able to wait. Perhaps only in the very beginning, when he was tempered by fear and hesitation, only then had he been slow, but otherwise, more beast than machine. Starscream had thrown switches in him, awakened him to sensations that bore no relation to the deep nobility of Autobot or Prime.

Skyfire moaned, tilted his chin up, rapture across his face. He spilt into his simulacra with a sigh, kissed the somnambulistic mouth, and with the same precision returned the mech to the stasis chamber.

Once done, he returned, and looked into Prime's hiding place.

"You can come out now, Prime. I know you're watching."

Prime froze, mortified, then awkwardly sidled out from behind the vat. As he did so, the cover moved, revealed a glimpse of an unfinished seeker protoform.

"I'm sorry," said Prime, "We're guests here, I shouldn't have..."

Skyfire held up a hand. "I knew that the path from Prima's quarters led here. Your memories--"

"She was never here."

A sad smile. "I know. But I like to think of her here. It was made for her, by the people who knew her best."

"Did you ever meet her? You've got an Omega Guardian massline. I can see it in your size."

Skyfire shook his head. He took up an asbestos cloth, began to clean his spill, already turning to glitterdust in the chill Titan atmosphere. Prime averted his head. If Skyfire had any modesty left he did not show it. Perhaps he'd been alone for far too long.

"I was created during the reign of Vector Prime, creator of Nemesis, grand-creator of Nova. Vector, The Lawmaker Prime. It was he who made all large mechs throttled by Cybertronian Decree. I learnt to hate Autobots under his dour rule."

Prime searched his inherited memories, knew of a Cybertron rocked by small war upon small war, mere anarchy loosed upon their world. Guardian Prime had been a mad Prime, bent on no more than destruction and death. His memory tasted of massblood and ashes. His slave-birthed offspring, Vector, had restored them to something approaching civilization. He was the only one of the recent Primes held in any respect.

"I was born during the rule of Sentinel Prime. The Placekeeper," said Prime after some deliberation. It was a social curtesy to identify the generation from which you had come, your lineage and caste. But could a reborn Prime identify himself for himself? Truly, he had been born at the dawn of Optimus' Age. _The Monster Prime. The Abomination._

"You?" asked Skyfire. "Or Orion?"

The name was not altogether welcome. "It doesn't matter where my sources came from."

Skyfire's stare was full of meaning, but broke before it became too uncomfortable. "Then he is truly dead." He discarded the silver-soaked cloth with disgust. "I knew him. The mech that gave you your magnificent body, your strength. I saw the Autobots take him away, heard how they scraped his protoflesh from this exoskeleton to seed the Matrix."

"I'm sorry. I know the process was traumatic."

"You know? Or you _know_."

Prime didn't respond. He knew as an outsider would know. Not as a real memory. That pain belonged to a dead mech. Worse still, his sight was drawn to the golden mech in the stasis chamber, its terrible likeness, burn of jealousy.

"Sunstorm," Skyfire said, noticing Prime's furtive gaze. He touched the stasis chamber's surface lovingly.

"He looks just like him." Prime's voice cracked.

"And more, were he allowed to wake."

"But _why_?" Prime gestured about him, at the chambers and their contents.

"Have you ever loved, Prime? Not out of duty, or the fealty of friendship, but with the agony of separation, to be torn and halved?"

"I..."

Skyfire did not wait for his reply. "What would a Prime know, your life a mutter of Thaumaturge chants and everything chosen for you? I loved a God Soldier once, the last of his race, the perfect creation of Primus, I saw him killed before me, his spark broken into a dozen pieces."

He moved his hand over a clear dome of polycarbonate set at one end of the table, swept aside the ice-crystals that made the surface opaque. Beneath lay shards of indigo crystals on a bed of gel, some brighter than others. Prime knew what a crushed spark looked like.

"Megatron wanted an army of God Soldiers of his own, charged me with regrowing them from my...this...broken spark. The one _he_ had broken, crushed with his own hand." Skyfire reached in, took one of the indigo shards. A weak pulse of light. "Supplied me with all number of protoforms, stolen - from here and there. Different castes. Different moieties. No continuity among his pilfered units. I halfway hoped I could regrow the one I'd loved but...it was only a hope. The shards did not seed well in anything of an insect caste, worked better with the old-language groups...but Megatron did not bring me enough of those."

"You made the Seekers?"

"I made him God Soldiers. Or tried to. The Seeker name came later. Seeking for divinity perhaps. Unfinished. Not Whole. You have heard the prophecy, no doubt?"

Prime nodded. Elita had often mourned her lack of sight, of the mech-child born from God Soldier and a Prime, when no God Soldier ever bore offspring, when they as a race had all but died out.

"Megatron believed." Skyfire replaced the shard. "I knew he was not interested in mere soldiers. Wanted the right of Prime, and to re-start the Prime lineage under his own name. For that would need both the Matrix...and a God Soldier."

"He never could get the Matrix. Not while there were Primes."

"Evidently. I gave him two seekers, and no doubt he spilt into them both before he realised that they could not become gravid."

"Starscream..."

Skyfire's maudlin face was shadowed with sympathy and regret.

"I know what you try to hide Prime. I know that it was you. Star would not have chosen a lesser mech to seduce in order to get what he wanted."

"No. It was not seduction."

A pity-laden glance. "That was always his greatest talent. He would make you believe it was real. It used it on me, even though I still called him friend, and Megatron, though he is equally as cunning and was perhaps Starscream's only equal."

"No," said Prime again, and his voice seemed small. Pleading. "You weren't there. You don't know what we went through."

Skyfire only turned away, replaced the cover on Sunstorm's jar. "I have had this conversation before, Optimus. With others. More than once. I do not care to argue with a Prime. For all that I wear the Decepticon logo, in my spark I am still an Autobot, and the shame that the Matrix Bearer could be so easily led astray...I care not to argue such a thing. If it is easier for you to believe that he cared for anything other than power - ever - then do so."

Prime was struck dumb by Skyfire's dismissal of his memory of Starscream. Could not put in to words what they'd felt, what they'd experienced. Did not want to offer those moments up as evidence, lest they be torn apart like so many smashed atoms. Starscream was dead. Memories were all he had left. He pressed his hand to his chest. Pain there, bottomless as the Pit. Even the Matrix mourned.

Alerted by the change in the silence Skyfire returned to him. Saw the wrenching despair on Prime's face, even though his battlemsk was up.

"You loved him."

"Let's not speak of this."

Skyfire bent his head. "I know sch a thing. I'm--"

He had no chance to finish. The air behind him shimmered and coalesced into solidity. Blue mech, tight, pale face.

"Mirage!" spat Prime.

"Wait," said Mirage. His expression was pinched and pained. "We have been lied to."

"Ah," Skyfire stood back. "So you have found it."

Prime turned to Skyfire, seeking conformation.

Mirage stepped forward. "He lied, when he said there was no way off this planet! There's a space-bridge here, in the antechambers."

Skyfire only shrugged. "Where would you go? To Cybertron? There's nothing for you Prime, only death."

"Don't speak to him, you traitor!" Mirage was shaking with impassioned fury. "You kept us prisoner in this castle, tried to keep the Matrix away from those who need it most!"

_The Matrix?_

Maybe Mirage meant to say something else. Or maybe he didn't. Prime knew what was going to happen, knew it.

"And who needs it most, then?" asked Skyfire, gloomy as always. "The creatures who've been host to this parasite, or the institutions that seek to worship it blindly as a dead relic?"

He must have known too, senses high-tuned to the fact that there were others in the room, cloaked by Mirage's event horizon. They became visible in glory, cloaked in purple-anodised titanium mail, plasma cannons with barrels the size of a fist. Celestial Guards. Soldiers of the Council.

"Optimus, formerly known as Prime, you are hereby under arrest. You are to be escorted to the Celestial Temple where you will surrender the Matrix to the Council." The Guardian dropped his voice. Despite his bearing, he was still in awe of Optimus _Prime_. "Please don't make this difficult."

Other Guards appeared. A phalanx of them, charged with bringing the Matrix back. Prime was pushed onto his knees, hands behind his back. He barely felt his hands being pulled around behind him, the too-tight cuffs, their reading from the _Vector Principia_, Vector Prime's Book of the Law. His rights were being read to him, the rights of a common thief. Vector had not sought to include the rights of a Prime, for how could it be conceivable? The Prime was the Law.

Prime let his optics shutter into darkness._ At Last. _He had loved truly and completely, he had known the spectrums of despair and joy. Starscream had returned to him for one night - and how could he ask the universe for any more? Now the All Spark called him, a deep vibrato tide of music, calling him back to the Celestial Temple, calling him home.

And despite his impending death, for all that he was going to be destroyed by his parasite's removal, Prime thought of the Matrix finally being removed, and all he could feel was a whirling, falling relief.

_Dear Primus, it's over._

...


	25. A Gift Taken Freely

Twenty-five: A Gift Taken Freely

* * *

Jazz was the hardest to put down, shouting at them, cursing in every language he knew, which was a formidable tirade, full of hate and glottal stops. In the end they cuffed him too, and put him into a shambling sort of twilight stasis, so that he stumbled along behind like an Autophage on its eternal path.

More guards joined them, easily an entire troop - including a First Class medic, who wore Ratchet's colours and looked as stunned as Jazz by the enormity of this operation. No chance had been taken in securing the Matrix. Internal chatter skipped back and forth between individuals in data osmosis. They were a culture on the verge of a paradigm shift, the passing of a Prime, and not one of them was unaware of it.

Cowed by what was happening, Perceptor - last to be found - fell into line immediately.

"Wasn't there a fourth?" asked the Troop Leader. Although there was no Insect in him, he wore the ceremonial golden horns of his rank, sharp serrated protrusions from his temples that were more weapon than decoration, and bladed winglets at his shoulders.

At the Troop leader's insistence, Mirage gave a weak nod. "A small one. Astroscope."

Between the arrest and Jazz's outburst, Mirage had gone into some kind of shock, torn between duty and _duty_. It was no less than treason, this thing he was doing, the thing that the old songs used to sing about, the Overthrow of Omega Prime, or the Alpha victory against Prima during the First Coup, when Alpha Duex had claimed himself Warlord and Ruler of all Cybertron.

Faced with such an epic event, Mirage's communication became limited to gestures and half-syllables. Prime had seen Decepticon turncoats do the same thing when faced with giving evidence against Megatron, back when the Decepticon Leader was unconvincingly tried under Cybertron Law.

"And?"

"He ran away," said Perceptor, sullen.

"He'll be found," said the Troop Leader. "Once we bring more to sweep this place out."

"You realise the Matrix will die if you take it out of him?" Perceptor went on, even as they ascended the corridor to the Space Bridge chamber.

"You want to end up like your friend?" said another of the guardians, brandishing his cannon in warning.

Perceptor shook his head. "I'm not arguing. I'm just telling you what the Thaumaturgie won't. Have you seen a dead Matrix case when it has been discarded? It's like a lump of exoskeleton. All the life has gone out of it. You might as well worship a carcass."

The cannon crackled with a dull orange heat.

Prime said quietly, "Perceptor, don't."

"But Optimus..."

"I've accepted this. I have."

Perceptor would have said more, but they reached the portcullis to a rough-carved cavity of dirty ice. In that curiously barbaric manner of Old Cybertron, two slaves had been buried into the frozen entryway. Their Insect likeness was strong, as it was in those segregationist days. One had wings of a delicate monofilament, the other a proboscis, compound optics. Both were tied up.

Prime lifted his chin. He was about to return to the Temple as a prisoner, but he would return in pride, not cowed. He would open his chest voluntarily, loyal to the Autobots to the end.

The space bridge was a study in minimalist design. Two tines upthrown like giant arms in surrender, and the wound in spacetime hung between them like a decayed flag.

A technician, a green Alpha-bot, gawped at Prime for a long second before saying, "I've set the coordinates to the Celestial Temple. A medical team is waiting to retrieve the Matrix as soon as...as soon as he comes through."

Perceptor let out a strangled sob, but held it in. Jazz only lolled his head stupidly. If he had any opinion, it was sublimated under stasis. Prime did not say his goodbyes. They would see each other again, as one, within the All-Spark. Time would only be as fleeting as a breath.

A Prime and Leader to the end, he stepped through the bridge.

* * *

"It's done," she said.

With a shiver of fire, a thermite mortar exploded on the war-ward side of the levee, sending sparks and molten metal vomiting down upon their haphazard shelter.

Elita propped up the metal lean-to with steel stakes, pulled in deeper against the burning rain. They had needed to rest and recharge before heading into the Temple, and had chosen to bunker down in an already bombed-out part of the city.

As they huddled, Starscream caught the look on her remade face. Illuminated by the fire, he knew that something had taken a turn for the worse, and even Elita could not fathom it.

"What?" he said, "what?"

"They have Optimus. The Temple has him."

He had been waiting for it. That moment when it was confirmed, ever since his comrades had come to him in Tesselax's brothel and told him that the Autobot Council intended to have the Matrix returned to the Temple. Had steeled himself for finality, welded off his feelings. But he hadn't expected this.

Starscream pressed his hands together. His wings ached. His new eyes ached. His body seemed constructed out of small islands of discomfort, as if senses couldn't register anything between numb and hurt.

Not wanting to remain in that state he shifted his priorities, tasted the rancid atmosphere. "This battle won't last for much longer. They've exhausted their ammunition - using their emergency supplies. Old stock. Once that's gone, they'll retreat. We'll move on soon."

"Which side?"

Starscream met Elita's optics. She would know, not that it would make any difference.

"Does it matter? This is a militia battle. Factional fighting over energon stockpiles. Neither side will give us shelter."

"Worse than Empties," she said, and lay back with a sigh, prepared for a long wait. Pressed to conserve energy, Starscream was forced to lie next to her. His wings were too tender to be scraping around on bare steel.

The sounds of war made him restless. He should be out there. He should be winning back his life from where he had discarded it, back on the Earth desert, under Prime's bulk. In his memory the lizard still watched him, had not fled from his hand as it grasped nearby sand and stone, but now she had Elita's eyes.

The distant sob of heavy munitions broke the long silence.

"So," she said, "who was it that made the first overtures? You? Or Optimus?"

He'd stopped being startled by her direct way of speaking, was too wound-up to put himself in opposition to her. They were two mechs alone. Starscream did not dismiss her question, gave it thought.

Who had made the first move. Himself, perhaps, pushing upon Prime their first miserable coupling. But if he wanted to be technical, it was really Optimus who had crossed the line, inviting Starscream to share his room, those bleak, desperate optics that had seen too many atrocities hiding a face full of secrets.

And that little act of cleaning him, great Prime doing what a slave would do to a master? That action had disarmed him. Starscream had been the one seduced, and he didn't even know it at the time, so full of hate he was. The pain returned. Oh - to be touched like that again. Only two mechs in his life had treated him such, and only one out of genuine need, not out of some wretched memory.

"Why ask me this now?" he asked, bitterly.

"We're reminiscing, is all. Seeing as we can't do it this other way." She touched his chest with her mantis-claw and laughed at his instinctive recoil. "Were we to share sparks, I know where your envious mind would go. Me and him. Our history."

Starscream couldn't roll away from her, but tilted his head so that his peripheral vision wasn't so consumed by the Oracle's dark shape. "That's for you to know. I don't wish to."

Elita was not about to be brushed off, sank the figurative blade deeper.

"He wasn't like he is now. Not a battle hardened warrior. He was so new. Wounded by rebirth. I was not his first lover, and I did not intend to be with him long." She huffed a regretful noise. "By our nature and talent, Oracles need to spark share with many, and such gregariousness can be a security risk if one of the network happens to be a Prime."

"But you went ahead anyway," said Starscream, curious despite himself. So Prime had a history of illicit relationships, or at least one other apart from himself.

"The Elders had had him spark-broken too early. They saw a mech of adult size, ready. He was only a spark-child dressed in a dead mech's armour. But then, I think they knew that all too well." Her crazy optics blazed with odium. "A perfect opportunity to scour any softness out of their end-time warrior. Make all his intimate moments hateful."

"This is why you were with him?"

"It was an act of defiance on my behalf, you see. Undo all their dark work." She hooked Starscream's chin, drew his gaze to hers. "The things he did to you, the touches and loveplay that have enchanted you, these things he learnt from me."

A _whoof_ of discharged ions beyond a retaining wall gave her an excuse to move in close. "We would have remained lovers," she said, "If my vision had not deteriorated. I had already been reduced to Elita One by my false prophecies. As Elita Two, my rank would be akin to a bluecake-addled street preacher. I would not have been given permission to enter the Temple. So I fled, and by all accounts, he never recovered from my leaving him."

She did not need to say the rest, her _I was his first love, and don't you forget it,_ silence was enough.

Starscream looked up at the corrugated roof of the lean-to, a bare hand-span beyond his face. "You should have gone back to him, if he needed you so much."

"No. I gave Optimus up to preserve the rank of Prime, you understand that? _Prime._ That thing in his chest is more important than all the gold in the Celestial Temple. Even more than one mere mech, even if he is called Prime. The thing so precious that even he is not allowed to touch it - can you imagine? The Autobot Council, each one of them, would sever their heads from their shoulders, if that is what it was required of them to preserve the Matrix. I see now why he's chosen a Decepticon - the Matrix of Leadership is nothing to you."

"Not nothing. I am aware of its importance."

"Importance to another culture, yes. But you don't feel its presence. The glory of it. The enormity of it within our collective consciousness."

"It's a _parasite_."

"It is our _Prima Materia_. Our Source. One can never be quite sure where Optimus ends and the Matrix begins. How could he ever trust any friendship, any Autobot completely, when they swear obeisance to the Matrix from their creation date? When they cower and grovel before its existence? When the privilege and honour of spark-sharing with a Matrix Bearer overwhelms the simple moments of love? There is no dividing line between friendship and worship. He's led such a lonely life."

There was little more to say. They slipped into an uneasy recharge. After a short time they were woken by silence.

"The munitions have stopped. We can move now."

"Of course," said Elita. "They have stopped."

They crawled out from their hiding space, crested the wall. Cybertron might have been locked in orbit, but there was wobble enough to bring light to the regions on the Penumbra's edge. The sky had turned a dull red, a slow-light dawn over the ruins of what had once been the proud city of Vos. Tendrils of smoke made the sky look torn, as ragged as the hem of the Oracle's cloak.

"Oh, this war," sighed Elita.

The carcasses of fallen buildings, infrastructure writhing in frozen pain. A small mech ran past them, carrying a headless torso. There was no way to tell if he intended to cannibalise it for repairs, or if it was a broken sparkmate. Starscream had seen bonded couples refusing to release one another, even if one had died. It made sparkbonding more than a mere commitment. It was the way to madness. And joy.

"This way," she said, pointing to where the dawn was brightest, "there is an Autophage trail that picks up again." Sideways glance. "They will be Temple Autophages. Perhaps we can get there before this planet falls apart."

Starscream followed her. The Autophage trail, when they found it, did not belong the big juggernauts of the Temple Road, but they were sure to intersect. With a heavy spark, Starscream hooked onto a dumb unit and was taken away from his city, up to where the Cybertronian High Roads and the path into the Temple continued.

* * *

He knew it on the moment he stepped through the wound, that something was wrong. Knew it even as the phalanx of Temple guardians stood in their precise formations, as the Thaumaturgie were chanting (a terrible song, and the Matrix shrunk and sickened inside him) and the medics waited by the steel rack that would crack open his body and peel the exoskeleton away so the Matrix might be reached.

Emirate Xaaron stood upon a slightly raised lectern, along with a pair of senators - Guar and Meridian, those councillors who had argued most eloquently to have the Matrix removed from him. He would not flinch from their gazes, looked at them as Vector Prime might look on miscreants who had failed him, as Alpha Prime upon the No-Spark cultists, as all the Primes that made up his lineage.

And there it was, that thing that was wrong, the frozen rictus in their faces, that curled-lip stasis-grimace. And before he could shout a warning to the other guards coming through the spacebridge, Prime was flung to one side, the cuffs at his wrists pulling up his centre of gravity, nearly toppling him over.

Prime arrested his fall. Landed heavily on one knee. His hands were still restrained behind his back. Had they forgotten that his weapon-components were merged with his spine? The anti-matter sword elements would fuse with his wrist. He strained. The cuffs were blocking the transformation. They were sucking the strength from him. He could barely carry himself. Something lunged at him, a dark shape, inverted triangle. He kicked out his leg, made contact, rolled away.

A barked shout and a misfire, and an energon-barrel exploded, sending smoke pouring into the chamber. Prime dived for the cover of the smoke. The spacebridge's wound shut instantly, cutting a soldier in half. The half-mech's screams filled the room - the others must have seen the flames from the palace, shut the connection.

Scrabbling sounds, steel and steel, too many mechs in here, and the stasis locks on them failing so that some of the guards - the dead ones - began to fall and Prime could see their smoked out optics. Another explosion, this time the percussive shock knocking him into a wall, smoke pushed into the chambers' corners. For a terrible second he saw in visible light what was happening.

"_Decepticons,_" someone was shouting, far too late and well after the fact. "_Decepticons in the Temple!_"

No time to wait. He needed to get the cuffs off, he needed to get his weapon unfused, he needed...

...not to see Mirage being menaced by a massive Decepticon in purple livery and a triple's bulk. Needed not to see the smaller mech get his legs kicked out from under him and lie dazed on the cold floor, weapon skidding out of reach. He needed to be cold, and strong, not concern himself, but Mirage was an Autobot, Mirage was loyal to the Matrix, Mirage, for all that he had done, was still one of their own...

With a cry halfway between tearing metal and a dying scream he threw himself at the triple-changer, connecting with the massive inertia of the thing, shoved the Decepticon sideways. The plasma shot fired wide, gouged a scar in the floor the size of Mirage's head.

Through the smoke Mirage looked at Prime, aghast and uncomprehending. Prime had just saved him. Optimus. It was as if a veil had lifted, and he was seeing Prime - the mech - for the first time. Still shocked, Mirage's attention fell to the burn-scar that would have killed him, before he blinked out into invisibility.

Prime propelled himself to his feet, but could not take a step before the triple-changer was on him again. His plasma cannon whined with recharge. That burnt-ion stink filled Prime's mouth.

"This is for Starscream," came the hissed threat. Blitzwing straddled Prime's hips, trapping him, taking aim...

"Star...?"

"Blitzwing, no!" A shrieked entreaty, not a command. "Lord Megatron wants him."

Blitzwing - Prime knew of the name - shouted back to an unseen companion, "Megatron can rust himself!"

Even in his panic Prime registered that they were talking in Alpha dialect, and when they swapped to Decepticon, Blitzwing's accent still carried the odd placements and angular syntax of that old language. The Decepticon's face seemed almost liquid as he cycled though his personalities, each one of them glaring at Prime with hate. He was a triple, but an _Alpha_ triple? Alphas abhorred such things as gestalts and caste mixes and mech-trines.

"We should kill you. For what you did to him." Plasma cannon still raised. Blitzwing pressed the hot barrel to Prime's shoulder and dug in, burnt away the nanites, burnt past the molecular sheath that suppressed the inertial damage of a punch or a blow. Prime writhed, paralysed with pain. Slow, searing information choking up his circuitry, transmuting at the neural pathways to savage heat.

"Primus damn you," Prime shot back in Alpha dialect. "I never did anything to him."

A push, and Blitzwing retreated, his thin, calculating face showing now. A grey Decepticon ran to his side.

"Straxus dammit, Blitzwing, can't you just wait?"

"Octane, it shouldn't be us here. This moment belongs to _him_.

"Megatron-"

"Not Megatron," spat Blitzwing hotly. Octane hunched, fearful, as if Blitzwing's traitorous voice would be heard above the fighting. "Starscream. He needs to be here, needs to spit in the face of this filthy Autobot _rapist_ and _torturer_."

A dark emotion rose up in him. "Starscream's dead."

"That's what you think. For all that you did to him. The humiliations you subjected him to. But you never broke him. He survived you."

_He survived you_.

"You lie..."

Almost a whisper. Uncertainty in those two words, like barbed wire, swallowed and pulled out. The shock of it, now, in this equinoxial moment of his life, when living and dying seemed equally assured.

_He survived you_.

Even the noises from the main chamber were fading, muted by the gravity of the moment, this terrible discovery. He wanted to wail.

A hush descended upon them all, the fighting ceased. Those who would fight to their dying end were dead, the others subdued. Those footsteps, the meeting of mass with ground. That sound could not be mistaken. Cybertron rose up to meet Megatron, not the other way around.

Megatron stood over him, his pumice-coloured exoskeleton like fossilised bone. Crimson mass bled at his joints. Deep fractures in his face, giving him the gaze of a statue, an icon.

"It seems, my old friend," said Megatron in his perfect English, "we are always meeting in this position. I must say, I am disappointed."

Blitzwing pulled off Prime, but as he tried to sit up, Megatron's foot fell heavily on his chest.

"I think back on our first encounter, Optimus. When you killed my Second, my dear Infest, it broke my spark." The foot pressed in harder. Prime felt his chest-plates warp and crack. Megatron's pleasant demeanour faded. He switched to a crude Autobot, a language his people would not know.

"But you bested me, and beheaded him, and that wounded me deeply. Made me lose face. Left a place for that upstart clone to take my place, so that I had to share leadership with him. And you had something, something that belonged to me, something that should have been mine."

Behind them, a low, strangled sound. Emirate Xaaron had been strung up on the rack meant for Prime. Massblood dripped from his limbs. His optics winked and stuttered.

Megatron leant in close, "You see, my brother, he was there when the Matrix was put into the Sentinel Autophage, when they refused to place it inside me. Me, whom they had bred from God Soldier remains to replace Nova. He refused to see reason, saw me unfit. Unfit to lead. Unfit to bear the Matrix." Heavy hand falling on Prime's chest. Suggestion of intimacy.

"A pity we do not have more time. But then, you will not remember anything else, once this is done."

Slow hands opening up his chest, optics raking down Prime's naked spark. Prime hissed static, condemning the intrusion, but Megatron ignored him as if he was inconsequential.

"Today I retrieve what is rightfully mine. I take back the Temple in my name, and I take the Matrix for myself."

Quite deliberately, with the ease of a mech who had crushed a thousand sparks in his gunmetal hands, Megatron reached into the spark cavity and wrapped his hand around Prime's vulnerable spark.

* * *

TBC


	26. What The Dark Queen Knows

Twenty-six: What The Dark Queen Knows

* * *

Blitzwing had not been incepted a Decepticon, for all that he wore the mark with the pride of one natural-born to that terrible and magnificent race, but he had not been incepted an Alpha either. Not that, not even when his Oracle-parent had been an Alpha, had taught him the sacred language, donated mass and flesh and matter and the violet nanites that made up most of his skin.

No, he was no Alpha, not when his parent had nearly split in half in the donation process, that complicated and so-dangerous birthing practice of the Basics, whose bodies balanced on a treacherous fulcrum, part mass-production factory, part organic creature, part event horizon of a collapsed star. Blitzwing was an abomination, and when it became clear that he could not be hidden, his mass-donor had had fled Iacon to save him.

But she had never managed to _leave_, not in her spark, and taught him the Autobot ways and the language and the culture and the history, so that he grew up knowing he was an Autobot before all.

After their flight they found shelter deep in the twilight _banlieue_ of Greater Vos. City of shifting light, the sky always burning with a daybreak that would never come, it was rumoured that the No-Spark cult still existed here, cog-to-gear with the blacklisted laboratories of rogue scientists. The suburb was a dismal place, a station for the parts-trade underground, and always the sickly smell of burnt energon and poverty. Where once great helix-hives of Autophage nests had towered up in reaching exultation to a perpetual daybreak, a million years of scavenging for their exotic matter had reduced them to teeth in an organic's broken jaw.

His parent used to murmur whenever they passed a broken Hive, say something in a Cybertronian dialect he did not know. Only later, when he came to learn the argot of the parts-traders he remembered the saying: _Now you'll know what the Dark Queen knows._ Issued as a threat or a prayer, depending on the circumstance. Blitzwing had always thought of it as a slang for a death or an unfortunate accident, hissed between clenched jaws as a muon-blade was held to throat cables, something like that.

And then one day the Temple guardians had come and taken his parent, his last connection to his Alpha ancestry.

Blitzwing had grown mech-vermin cunning during his time in Outer Vos. His Alpha intelligence had meshed with a parts-trader's instinct. He'd hidden by imitating a sentinel Autophage, one of a shabby line that still shambled around an old 'Phage Hive, half-tracks chewing up the ferro-paper remnants of an Autophage nest. The Nest had been abandoned by the semi-sentient Queen long before Cybertron had evolved sentient life, but the paleo-mechanica still remained, moving in their irregular orbits, driven by a compulsion beyond mere programming.

For all that he lived, he would always remember his newly transformed body singing with the pain of change, praying to Primus that the guardians would not see the massblood staining the ground, giving him away. He would always remember his birth parent's last whisper, "Now you'll know what the Dark Queen knows,", and he had a moment of clarity, for it was not death that the 'phage Queen knew, but a passing on of the old ways, the seed of her awareness flowering from machine-logic to sentience, benchmark to her kind's destruction. The Dark Queen _knowing_ was what destroyed her kind.

One guard had levelled his cannon at the Autophage in front of Blitzwing, had muttered, "We can't have a triple-changing freak left running around. We'll just have to eliminate the possibilities," before his offsider had caught him with a violet claw.

"Don't. They're sacred to the slaggers here." Lower pitch, Alpha-speak. "It's a sin."

They had left, and left Blitzwing alone, and left him knowing just what he was that made him so hated. In the quick nature of his conscious trinity, Blitzwing knew that he was abandoned by the very people whom he thought were his brothers, and it made him bitter, and angry, at them and himself, for the curious construction that made him three minds in one body.

Now he knew what the Dark Queen knew.

The Decepticons had welcomed him and his anger with open arms.

Yet he never quite belonged, not with his strong Autobot accent that always made him sound officious, and foreign (Damn Autobots with their complex language and a word for everything. So different from the brief and precise Decepticon.). How could he belong when each Alter was a personality so decisively alone? He met other Triples like himself, but they were Decepticon made, and had never learnt what it was to be so confused.

The frost of his life had thawed when Starscream had come to them.

Starscream was something unique, a creature like a glitch in a program code. In that cocky and confident mech, burning up with restlessness that Blitzwing was certain even _he_ didn't understand, he found an unlikely ally. Instead of the faint whiff of rejection, Starscream had been morbidly interested in Blitzwing's physical construction, wanted to know how his body worked, how deep his consciousness cloud was shared, where his mass went, and if he could even mass-share. They tried - Starscream was not Blitzwing's first lover, so it was less like awkward and more like pleasant, and they both knew where they stood. No overloading or exaltations of ecstasy like one would expect from an Autobot lover. Strictly scientific. But the moment was ruined somewhat when Starscream admitted that he'd lain with Megatron more than once, and Blitzwing, still in the throes of Megatron worship, had always thought Megatron beyond the commonplace of mass sharing.

As always the whisper of the Dark Queen in his audios, her Autophage pheromone language whispering to him, telling him to never be secure, never be comfortable, because one day all that one knew about life could be swept away.

And she was here tonight in the chamber, whispering.

This triple-skill of his made him quick. Made him see what others did not. Saw that split second motion of Megatron's hand dipping into the spark cavity of the dazed Prime, knew what was supposed to follow, saw Megatron withdraw his hand, but something was _wrong, wrong._

Even before Megatron screamed, even before vermillion mass spewed from the ruined stump, well before the Prime whiplashed to his feet, Blitzwing saw.

_Now he will know what the Dark Queen knows._

Something in there, the sacred and mysterious cavity of Prime. Something _moving,_ verminous and foul within the corrupt innards.

The severed hand fell on the ground, still twitching in mute argument. Before Megatron could recover, Prime had kicked him in the chest, sent him flying.

A smaller blue Autobot, _an Alpha_, slithered out of infraspace and slashed open Prime's bonds, allowed Prime to tessellate the energy sword from his back. Blitzwing saw something jump between the two Autobots, an odd, fractured communication, some incomprehensible emotion between the two.

"Abomination!" roared Megatron, stumbling to his feet. Massblood splashed across the floor. "You took my hand!"

Megatron leapt forward, rushing Prime, but the Autobot warrior was ready for him, caught Megatron up in his own inertia and drove him into the floor. Massblood streaked across the Prime's face, obscuring an eye, half-blinding him.

"Watch out!" screamed the blue Alpha, and a phalanx of Decepticons converged on Prime, pounced on his back, smothering him with their weight.

_Don't,_ thought Blitzwing, already thinking of the time it had happened before, the disastrous outcome. _It won't work._

With a sizzle of burning protoflesh a head arose from the melee - poor Wrack - at the end of a sword-arm. The head rolled off as Prime hacked his way free of the scrum, and more came, but they fell under his blade and he was shouting a name, screaming it...

_Blitzwing..._

A few of the Temple guardians had managed to wrestle free of their captors and had joined the fray, lances slashing hard light.

A shout, and the blue Alpha reappeared at the space bridge controls. He punched the switch with a jubilant cry, and Autobot soldiers poured from the scar, one of them huge and pale, unlike any mech he'd ever seen before...

Then the Prime turned his dour attention on Blitzwing, that battle mask like a corroded slab of metal fused to the corrupt horror of his face. Blitzwing thought of what it hid, and his Alpha-sensitivities quailed.

The voice boomed out at him, and Blitzwing could hear the madness underneath, "_Where is he?_"

Nearly as big as Megatron, the monster Prime advanced on Blitzwing, a pair of Decepticon soldiers rushed Prime-

_"WHERE IS HE?_"

Blitzwing fled.

* * *

Starscream had never seen the Celestial Temple from inside the crystal dome. The sunlight shattered through the facets in the ceiling, reformed in daggers of colour across the walls and floor. It cowed him. Such beauty. He was not immune to magnificence. He knew that this entryway had been constructed for the purpose of putting a visitor in their place.

Elita kept pushing him on ahead, through the great hall. She was alive with an electric excitement.

He'd known of the Autobot devotion to the rank of Prime, but had not _known_, not until now. Not until walking in through the towering doors, the bright expanse of the Temple proper, the impossible engineering of the colonnades that held up the hemisphere of volcanic glass. Nearly half of everything in here was transported from off-world, no geologic process in Cybertron existed to make rocks and natural glass. Everything on Cybertron was metal-based, except that which fell from the sky. A body would sense the alien difference of the place, the radiation decay of a mineral not associated with home, be unnerved by it. The expense was incredible.

At each column stood a fane of a Prime, each constructed to the art and culture of the time. Starscream knew none of them. Elita knew them all.

"Oh, I remember now! Here. Guardian Prime. And here, Zeta Prime, the Pretender. And my glorious Vector Prime... his face always watching me." She turned to Starscream, puzzle-face aglow. "He was the best of all my lovers. Vector, as stern in the berth chamber as he was with his following the decrees laid down by Alpha Prime. But such skill he had."

It was only a moment of recollection, for she was running again, a down-low lope over the rippled gold floor. Starscream stumbled on behind. Even now he had to admire Ratchet's skill as a field medic, for the ankle strut had held fast despite everything he'd been through.

They had entered the Temple by the slave route, a culvert of rusted iron. To say it was an unguarded conduit was wrong - despite the absence of the purple-robed Temple guards, despite no Autobot Legionnaires in scales of anodised mail - this was as secure as any of the Boulevards. The darkened underhalls had their own security. Temple minions, junkions, the refitted ore-loaders and other unseen servants of the Temple.

A multitude had gathered upon their approach. Starscream's weaponless arms stung. He could smell cheap explosive materials, cobbled together armaments, creatures ready to preserve the very power that enslaved them. Starscream hid behind the Autophage, the stupid thing butting against a wall placed in its eternal path.

Elita had been indignant. "Don't you recognise your Oracle, after all this time?"

They had recognised her, and in any other situation Starscream would have been amused to see such a junk pile shamble of mechs falling to their stomachs and scraping before her. He sneered at them. Such a worship was unheard of among Decepticons. Even Megatron wasn't given such welcome.

"And this," she said, "Is my friend."

Starscream expected suspicious glances his way, but there was even more mumming and praying as the deep-violet lights of his new optics fell over them.

Elita continued, "We have business with the Prime."

"The Prime is dead," hissed one horror, a half-bot held together with twists of wire and rust-smeared rivets. His jaw rattled around in his broken face. Elita glanced sideways at Starscream, waiting for his reaction. He remained steady, would not let her see how he felt, when even he didn't know what he felt.

There was wailing from the others, then another mech stepped forward. Her stripped-down character, the blandly attractive face. Only her optics held any interest. They belonged to infinity. She wore ruined subspace like a caul.

"He is not dead. You are not the only Oracle who has had to leave this place."

"Chromia. Sister-oracle, it has been a long time."

The Temple Oracle twisted her face, showed ugliness, the broken plates beneath her mask shifting to reveal the envy suppurating beneath her. "You should have stayed away, Elita _Two_, not brought some -" she looked Starscream up and down with a sneer, "-some painted night crawler as justification for your false prophecies."

Elita pulled herself up to her full height. She was taller than the other Oracle, more savage in aspect. Chromia still had the gleam and delicacy of a mech who was palace-bred.

"Chromia, my dear, let us not fight."

"You should have stayed. You abandoned us Elita, and for what? To protect your rating and stay in the Prime's berth? You who have lain with all the Primes from Prima to Optimus, you could have helped us. But we've all been cast down to the underhalls, to live among these wretched creatures."

Chromia's voice rose to a screech, and the gathered mechs only bowed lower. "Oh go ahead and grovel, slaves. You are not worthy of even my foot!" She boosted one of the junkions away, sending his backpack of waste tumbling over the ground. "After you left Elita, the Thaumaturgie gained power, had all the Oracles removed from the Council seats, seats we had held since Primon himself!"

Elita was still. "Why was I not told of this?"

Chromia barked brittle laughter. "Your talent has rotted so far? Oh, they were clever. We were never barred from the Temple. Only sent down here to rot with the waste and the garbage."

As she moved, a tendril of her subspace veil brushed against Starscream's cheek. Chromia turned on him. "You! He will only see you as chattel, spoil, less than one of these wretches. You know this to be true. He will take you without respect. You will lose the esteem of your comrades and then yourself," a darting hand, scouring off his disguise and revealing the purple scar on his shoulder, "he will end up growing tired of you, _Decepticon._"

Elita grabbed Starscream, pulled him back. But Chromia's words were resonating. Him, meaning Prime. Chromia had tapped into his deepest fear. _You know this to be true._

"She's only picking up scraps and offal. She was never ranked, Starscream. Don't listen to her."

Chromia laughed again.

Elita pointed her mantis-claw at the Temple. "Who rules here now? Alpha Trion?"

An unholy roar of mech-voices. Chromia hushed them.

"Alpha Trion is in stasis, he is so very old. The Thaumaturge, Arcane, now rules the Temple, advises the Council on spiritual matters."

A hiss from Elita. Starscream could sense the dread in her. She knew this mech-priest.

"I will see Arcane. He will not deny me an audience."

"We won't stop you," said Chromia with a smirk. "You will have clear passage."

Elita gave a regal nod, swept past in her ragged cloak. Chromia met Starscream's optics. "Remember," she said in pitch perfect Decepticon song-language, before fading back in the shadows.

This was how they had come to the Temple, traversing the moving walkways, emerging into splendour. But despite Elita's obvious joy at returning, she could not hide her unease from Starscream.

"Empty," he said.

"Yes."

"I would have expected a guardian, at least."

"Yes," she said again, between gritted jaws.

As if constructed on a great Fibonacci spiral, or a giant mollusc shell, the Temple wound inwards, successive rooms and corridors of decreasing size and increasing value. Starscream had to stare ahead of him, not get caught up in fractals so complex they would cause a short circuit in you no sooner than you looked at them.

Close to the centre, they passed a pair of great doors, grander than any other. He recognised the same face of Vector Prime, crown and mace in hand. But common steel straps had been welded across the entrance, out of sorts with the rest of the grandeur.

"Where does this room lead?"

"You recognise it?"

He was alerted to a warning tone in Elita's voice. "Your lover," he said, carefully. Then, "you want me to know it? You want me to _remember._"

"You and your brothers were cloned from a God Soldier. You should have memories at least."

Starscream could feel his facial pavements twisting. He shook his head vehemently. "I'm no God Soldier. I'm not something wrapped in a dead skeleton."

_Not like Him._

A moment passed, and Elita sighed. "It is the sacred berth chamber. Inside, there is a star sapphire, an aluminium crystal, one of the rare pure Cybertronian minerals. Every Prime from Prima to Sentinel was budded, conceived, assembled or birthed there, according to their design."

"And Optimus?"

The voice came from behind them, and startled them both.

"The stone labs of the underhalls. Our current Prime was cobbled together from dead things. There is no true Prime left to us. These doors will open no more."

Arcane must have had the skills that Skywarp had, thought Starscream, to have crept upon them so suddenly. He was a tall, slender mech, no colour nanites upon his exoskeleton, giving him a grey look beloved of spark-child horror stories. The fabric of his cowl and cloak were not metal, but some synthetic fibre.

"Arcane."

"Elita...One is it? Or have you come back to accept your ranking?" He looked at Starscream dismissively, and it rankled him like an acid burn. Reduced to this. Mechs had once cowered before him. Had feared him. His name had once been a thing to fear. No more. His gun arm became an ache.

"So you found yourself a God Soldier?" Arcane said to Elita, hiding a deep loathing under the simper of his words. "Or the pitiful remains of one. What do you expect it to do? Win the desire of whatever mech next becomes Prime? He's ruined. I doubt you'd even get Senator Guar to spill into him now..."

The pale mech reached out a hand to touch Starscream's face, but misjudged Starscream's averted gaze and sagged shoulders for weakness. With his old speed he had Arcane's hand up behind his back and stabbed his fingers into the priest's throat. Arcane gurgled, went limp.

"_No!_" shouted Elita, "Starscream, let him go or-"

"Or what?" growled Starscream. He held Arcane in front of him like a rag-doll shield. "Or he'll disappear on me?"

"Decepticon filth!" Arcane tried to warp, and his hands dipped in and out of transparency.

"You're wondering why you don't slip out from under my fingers, do you, Autobot? Could it be..." He feigned mock surprise, "That God Soldier skills can't be used against me?"

"Please, Starscream, you don't know what you're doing," Elita moaned.

Arcane was furious, but even if he had strength, it would have been nothing against Starscream. Even months in convalescence and captivity had not stripped him of his warrior-honed strength.

"The guardians will come for you, and they will tear every limb from your worthless body," hissed Arcane. "I will feast on your spilt flesh."

"Then let us wait for them shall we?" A theatrical pause, and Starscream revelled in it, "But wait, could this be why there were no guards in the Temple? Why you have been the first one to meet us? Arcane, you have been betrayed. The guards have been deployed elsewhere. You've been set up."

"Pit whore! You wear Tesselax's belt! How many mechs fucked you in those dirty chambers of his? You stink of them!"

Starscream tightened his grip. "When I am finished with you, you will wish you were with them." He tipped his head towards Elita, "I have to thank you though, for getting me all the way into the Temple."

Elita stared at him...and as she moved the landscapes between logic and prophecy access it dawned on her. The horror passed over her face.

"The Decepticons are in here. The Decepticons have breeched the Temple."

Starscream nodded, once. "You've confirmed it. Elita, you've no part of this. You should leave."

He could feel her trying to use the belt on him, but hooked into Arcane, the control fizzled away across the pair of them. "As much as I have enjoyed your company, it's time for us to part ways."

"I can't do that."

"I don't think you have much choice in the matter."

Her arm exploded into a thousand shards, reformed into a weapon, long barrel, the combustion chamber a bright cage of magnetic fields. It charged up with a whine, pulling mass and matter from a thousand multiverses. Starscream swung Arcane's limp body in front of him and they spiralled in a mad dance across the golden floor of the corridor.

Her hideous smile was exultant.

"You forget who I am, Starscream. Do you think a mere defenceless Oracle would have paired with Primes? I am just as much a warrior as the God Soldiers ever were!"

"Get back. I'll kill him!

Arcane shrieked, "Kill him, kill him!"

She tracked Starscream at point-blank range. "Drop him Starscream, don't be stupid."

"I'm no slave!" Starscream tightened his grip. "Not to your fortune-telling, not to any Autobot, not to Prime. My destiny is mine alone and I will lead my people to victory!"

"Oh Star," she sobbed, and fired at him.

The killing light clipped Arcane's antennae, shattered off a wall, and Elita fell back, wounded, her shoulder smoking. Starscream looked about with startled eyes. At the corridor's far end stood a lone figure, braced with a gun too powerful for him. Megatron's side-arm. But the mech holding it...

"Blitzwing, Straxus, get over here!" Starscream stumbled forward, dragging the wounded priest with him. Elita clawed weakly at his ankle, groaned something in an unspeakable language.

Blitzwing's shadow ran before him. The lights in the Temple were flickering. He approached Starscream, vents open, air-cycling hard.

"Starscream, you made it." They bumped shoulders like comrades, but Blitzwing held on for longer, clutched him as if drowning.

"You got inside!"

"Yes, but something terrible happened." Blitzwing gulped down a breath. "Megatron..."

"Megatron is here?"

Blitzwing nodded, miserably. "Megatron didn't wait. All he had to do was wait, that was the plan."

"Wait? For what?"

The triplechanger seemed to recoil from a memory. "Until the Matrix was out of Prime. Until the Prime was dead. If only he'd waited..."

The lights flickered again. Deep in the Temple's lower level, the percussive shockwaves of a silent explosion. Starscream felt his spark ache. "He's still alive."

"I don't know. Prime seemed to be making short work of him..."

"I didn't mean Megatron," Starscream shouted, "I meant Prime, is he still alive?"

The percussive shots became louder. Arcane began to gurgle in pretence of laughter. "Fools," he said, "nobody has ever penetrated the core of the Celestial Temple, not since Alpha Duex - and even he paid the price for his sins!"

"Shut up!" Starscream gave the Thaumaturge a shake, sent him rattling. "Blitzwing, we're moving."

They had barely stepped over Elita when a commanding voice bellowed out.

_Stop._

Starscream almost stumbled. Blitzwing said, "It's him, oh Straxus it's him, Starscream, forget about the priest, he'll slow us down."

"Keep moving," grated Starscream, and a warning shot was fired over his head, smearing plasma down the far wall.

Starscream broke into a limping jog, dragging the crippled priest after him, the corridors curving and rising and falling, Blitzwing firing off shots that didn't quite make their target-

_Don't think of the target, don't, you're a Decepticon, you do what you have to do._

And the bolts were being returned, sparks and hot metal raining down on them, until finally a set of blast-doors so welcome it was as if the All-Spark had materialized in front of them.

They were not electronic, and it took time to close the doors by hand, but once done they could hear their pursuers clamber at the barriers, yelling in their foul Autobot language.

"They won't hold," said Arcane, and Starscream didn't bother to shake him, because he knew it to be true. Already a whisp of smoke was coming through the seam. Damn you Megatron, he thought, always his reach exceeding his grasp. They would have to work hard to claim a victory from this mess.

"It'll slow them down. Let's go."

So concerned were they about what was _behind_ them, they didn't look to what was in _front_ and Starscream collided head-on with a smaller blue mech who glared at him, completely without recognition, but with all the hate of an enemy.

"Stay where you are, Decepticons, you're going nowhere!" shouted Mirage. He raised his side-arm.

The heat of the melting doors was immense, like the inferno of a smelting pool.

Starscream pulled Arcane in front of him. "Let us pass, or your priest dies!"

Something in this strange Decepticon's voice, something familiar, made him double-take, a picosecond of hesitation that was all Starscream needed. He threw Arcane's bodyweight at Mirage, knowing just what mass was needed to topple him aside, and plucked the side-arm out of his hands as he fell.

"You!" Mirage blurted before Starscream kicked him in his vocaliser, left Mirage rolling on the floor, holding his damaged throat.

"Be happy I don't kill you, Autobot, we need all the hostages we can get. Blitzwing get him up..."

_"Release him!"_

Too late. A massive shape had ploughed through the molten door, regardless of the burn scores off his back and shoulders and the shrieks of warning from his companions, Prime with his battlemask up, Prime who he had not _seen_ since that terrible night on the ledge, when he'd said things to Starscream that had crushed his spark and shamed him before witnesses. Prime who ignored him and went straight for Blitzwing and smacked the gun out of his startled grip and picked him up by his neck and screamed, "_Where is he? Where is he?_"

And Blitzwing was adding his splutters and chokes along with Mirage's. He moaned, "The Dark Queen knows..."

Starscream let Arcane fall.

"Prime," he said.

Prime turned to look at him, ready to kill this black mech with the violet eyes who was getting in his way, and yet, and yet...

Hate turned to recognition, but puzzled, sense and body-memory conflicting.

"I'm sorry," said Starscream.

He raised Mirage's firearm, pointed it at Prime's head, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

TBC


	27. Strangers

Twenty-seven: Strangers

* * *

He kept thinking of Prowl, that day when they had spoken on the high peak of the Falling Man, on that great southern continent. Kept returning to that moment when Prowl said, "You made the wrong decision, choosing him."

Prime had known his Second all his life. Even longer perhaps, as there had been moments when Prowl had said, "You used to be..." and would stop, because _You_ was not _Optimus_, but the mech who haunted his body, all that was not Matrix, the dead part, the part they all hated.

_Orion._

How hateful that mech must have been. Some throttled thing dragged out from the Pit.

In his younger days, he only parroted what the Council and Thaumaturgie taught him. The Matrix was the jewel and his body an unfortunate necessity, a mistake perhaps, lumbering and massive besides the complex majesty of all the Primes. Even Nemesis Prime, the Dark Prime whose likeness had been expunged from the walls of the Temple, whose statue was only two footprints aboard a ruined plinth, commanded more respect than him. _No fanes will be raised to your glory,_ he was told. _No image of you will sully these sacred walls._

The knowledge hardened him. When he fought, he was glad to be cut, to be injured, to be burnt and shot and scarred and scourged for _he_ was being damaged so, mech of his past. Such a disregard for pain made him feared, made his legend strong, made his enemies think he could feel no pain, when in fact he felt it more than any other.

They thought him an Automaton, early on. Little more than the Sentinel that had sustained the Matrix after Nova had passed. If not for Elita, he might have taken all that hate inside himself, might have let it fester and flower, make him that thing they feared, another Dark Prime carrying a Dead Matrix, an avatar of chaos and suffering.

She had saved him, and inadvertently saved Cybertron, but the Council and the Thaumaturgie would never look at it that way. But she was an Oracle and not for him alone. Besides, Prowl had been his designated caretaker from his inception date. For all that Prowl loved him now, gave him loyalty to the end, Prime knew that there had been a time when this had not been so. He remembered a particularly vicious argument Prowl had had with the Council, ostensibly in private, but really not, for Prime, still mass-bleeding and new a room away, had heard every word.

-_ I'm a warrior! I was made Second by Nova! I led your army against the Decepticons when you had no Prime! I will not be reduced to caretaking your rotted experiments!_

-_ You will watch him Prowl. You will tell us if the transplant fails, if he shows signs of...Nemesis._

-_ There's no Prime in that...thing in there. Why won't it be put out of its misery? I saw the change, Senator Meridian, Alpha Trion, I beg you, it's not too late to end this."_

But demoted and given over to Prime-watching was what they had done to Prowl. Prime himself never told Prowl what he had heard. They were strangers then.

It would take a war to prove each to the other. Prowl gave Prime allegiance. Prime gave Prowl the rank of Second, much to the disgust of the Councillors who had sidelined Prime and Prowl both.

He was sitting at the foot of the medical berth when Prime's systems came on-line, his Overseer's face dour and watchful as always. Prime sensed the cyberemones of concern escaping his second, knew that Prowl gave his allegiance still.

Prime pulled himself up with a groan. The damage reports were hazy. His directives were screaming, _get up_ and _follow him_, but the memory and motivation escaped him. The diagnostic machines complained in harsh binary language at his movement.

Prowl gently eased him back down. "Easy Prime, you're in no condition to move just yet."

"I left you on Earth."

"Yeah, well when the Decepticons took over the Temple, everyone off-world was mobilised to fight." He stopped. "We can only bring troops through the Bridge. We're totally surrounded."

"You don't have to stay here. I know you'd rather be leading the battle, not sparksitting me."

Prowl looked aside, uncomfortable, returned. "I had to look after you."

He raised his hand to grab Prowl, bring him closer, and he saw black burn scores across the red surfaces of his forearm. His sight was blurry. His audios were buzzing on an odd frequency. "When...?"

"Megatron-"

_Hand reaching in, pain around his spark and then..._

"Easy," said Prowl again. It seemed as if he was speaking with some force but the words came to him soft and distant. "You collected a plasma cannon to the head, close range, okay? Your sight and hearing will come back soon, but you might have some black patches in your memory." He sat back, giving Prime a fogged view of plastic sheeting, portable equipment. A field hospital.

Pain in his spark. But the blast doors had come down.

Blast doors? Fierce heat, moving through molten metal because he had to get through, had to know...something. He was shouting, words, important words.

His name. Someone saying his name, and violet eyes, and then bright light and...

Starscream.

He pressed his hand to his head, then to his spark, felt the Matrix move, restlessly there. The convergence of this moment, the discovery of life, that second of joy and the crushing betrayal.

He had fallen like a tower cut off at its base, his fading senses only registering a throaty, hysterical babble of words, unmistakably Mirage. _"You slagger! You rotting traitor, I was right about you, I was right all along..."_

No, not Starscream. Not the blind mech with his wing-nubs, bright colours. Dead, he was dead...

"Prime?" asked Prowl, concerned.

He did not know that mech, the one with the atavistic purple optics, those sharp, raw span of wings like the edge of a broad blade. But his mind had converged them. Despair and longing and hate had brought the two disparate images together.

Prime patted Prowl aside, sat up again. A dozen gun barrels came online and fastened on him. A phalanx of Temple guardians.

Prime turned to his Second. His optics flashed a blue warning off Prowl's dark exoskeleton.

"These soldiers would be more useful elsewhere, Prowl."

"It's not my decision. They're keeping you safe."

"While the Temple burns?" He pulled himself free of the sensors, slid off the medical berth. A young guard made the mistake of jumping forward and poking Prime in the chest with his cannon. Prime cuffed him aside in a desultory manner, as if he really wasn't there, and pushed another pair aside to duck through the medic-station doors. He ignored their shouts of _stop or we'll shoot_ and Prowl hurried after him saying, "Sorry, he's very sorry," but from Prowl's tone one could tell he was gleeful in a way he had not been for a long time. What were Temple guardians to a Prime?

Beyond the medic bay an Operations centre had been hastily set up, polyimide fabric lining the walls to protect the precious engravings. One half of Guardian Prime's ruined face stared out, as if he was peeping from behind a curtain.

Senator Meridian was standing at the command table, his large Alpha-body colonised in a striking iridescent blue-green. It was said he changed colour every few solar years, such was his vanity. He looked up from where the plasma images swirled, stared at Prime with an undisguised loathing.

"Lord Prime, you are meant to be resting."

A guard ran up behind Prime, "Senator, we couldn't stop him."

"Silence," thundered Prime. "Meridian, you have done your duty in my absence, but now I need to relieve you and assume command."

Meridian was almost speechless, before exploding.

"You have no authority here!" shouted Meridian. To the other stunned Autobots he shouted, "Seize him, seize the usurper who holds our Matrix hostage!"

Before any weapon could be drawn, Prime had cleared the table and had Meridian's head under his arm, tight, sword drawn. The Senator writhed and struggled and spat, and a hundred pairs of optics stared at each other in mute indecision while Prowl shouted, "Lower your weapons! Lower your weapons, all of you, he is your Prime!"

"What is the meaning of this?"

Old creaky voice. Senator Xaaron lumbered in, flanked by a servant whose sole job consisted of keeping the old Leader on his feet. Guar was not so far behind, thin fingers linking and separating as if he was trying to weave a political advantage from all this chaos.

"I expected the war to be fought over my Temple," said Xaaron quietly, "not the rule of our soldiers."

"Senator Meridian is just leaving," said Prime.

He tossed the Senator aside and Meridian ran to Xaaron's side.

"Xaaron, quickly! We must make peparations straight away, we must get the Matrix out of him..."

Xaaron raised his old optics to Prime. There was no surprise in the ancient Emirate. He had been involved in squabbles since Primon was young. No doubt they repeated and repeated.

"Well?" said Meridian.

Xaaron limped past Meridian and placed a wrapped package on the table. He pulled a cord, let the ends fall open. A muted gasp filled the room. Megatron's hand. It twitched, still grasping at empty air.

"Senator Meridian, why don't you just take the Matrix from Optimus yourself. Open your chest up, Prime, let Senator Meridian take what he wants."

Wheezing at the indignity, Meridian stared at the hand, and at Prime, who creaked open his armour in warning.

"You can't be serious, Senator."

"The Matrix decides where it wants to go, Meridian. Perhaps it has decided that it doesn't want to leave just yet." Prime caught Xaaron's glance, and there was an odd triumph there.

"I'll be in my quarters," Meridian said tersely. "Manifold, come!"

Meridian's servant scuttled after his exiting master, fearful. He would take the brunt of Meridian's anger. The Senator's behaviour would earn an obsidian blade between his chest-plates one day. Prime returned to his fellow Autobots.

The stunned silence fell away to a chatter of a dozen languages, all amazed at what they had seen. "Good to have you back, Prime," said one green mech, and the others nodded in agreement.

Xaaron dropped the hand back into its pouch.

"Pity that wasn't his weapon hand. He can still fire his gun."

"Tell me where we are, and what I've been missing."

Xaaron and Prowl went over the plans. It did not look good. On one hand, they'd regained control of the Space Bridge chamber, and most of the Underhalls, but the airborne Decepticons had penetrated the Council sections, the tactically important upper reaches, including the security sections near the centre. The Autobots had been pushed back to their redoubt at the Bridge chamber, and a small defensively secure Underhall position. "...managed by Oracles, of all mechs."

"And outside of the Temple?"

Xaaron shook his head in defeat. "They've mobilised sleeper cells across the streets of Iacon," he said. "We've never seen anything like it. There's a degree of planning in here that surpasses anything our intelligence analysts could have predicted. They must have been laying down preparations for years, waiting for the time to strike."

"Why now, of all times?" Prime looked out over the maps and diagrams, the blue Autobot locations forced back by ever increasing violet icons of Decepticon activity.

"Several events," said Xaaron. "For one, they knew that the movement of the Matrix out of a living Prime and into the Temple proper would cause instability in the ranks-" he paused, then continued, "And Optimus my boy, I voted for you to keep it, but I am only an old relic of Primon's reign and who am I but a Ceremonial member of council? It is the Meridians and Guars who have power now."

Guar coughed, and his weaving-tic picked up in speed.

"And the other event?"

"A leader has returned to them."

"Megatron."

"No. We know this now. He merely punctuated their history since Nova. In all the times during your reign, they followed one constant, an individual who kept them together even during their Diaspora, even as we had our pogroms against them, as great as any No-Spark campaign Alpha Prime held. Megatron's Second. The propaganda suggests a weak character, someone who could never quite wrest power for himself, but we now know this is not the case. He organised this, years and years of organisation planning as intricate as anything Alpha Duex ever did."

Prime knew who he was speaking of. Knew from the shrinking, convulsive pain in his spark.

"No. He is dead."

"He is not dead. He is alive. Starscream. It was he that shot you."

* * *

Arcane's optics proved useful for the three more blast doors they needed to pass through to get to the security section, until finally they came to a door that was not like the others, no carvings, no exotic off world material, just plain steel. Blitzwing was busy with internal-comming nearby Decepticons, updating Starscream at each checkpoint.

"We've pushed the Autobots back to the Underhalls. Megatron's managed to seal off the main Boulevards, so no more soldiers can get in." He spoke in a very reduced Vos Insect, kept the language as exotic as possible. "We've surrounded them at the Space Bridge chambers."

"Looks like things might not be a disaster after all," said Starscream. "But if we don't control greater Iacon security, we're trapped in here. We mustn't underestimate our enemy."

Like most creatures used to giving orders and living in luxury, Arcane took very little time to break. He had no desires beyond self preservation, wept that the door was on time delay according to a ceremonial rite, (but Starscream was certain it had more to do with security) and they had nothing to do but wait.

"I'm glad this day has come," said Mirage with venom. He struggled against his bonds. "I'm glad I got to be there when Prime finally saw you for what you are."

Blitzwing expected Starscream to strike the hostage for his impertinence. Odd that he did not, only turned away so that his face was obscured. "Silence him, Blitzwing," Starscream said quietly.

Blitzwing spat out a sticky epoxy glue from a gland behind his dental plates, blocked the optics and vocalisers on their two prisoners. Once set, he shackled them up at the far door. Any blasting or melting would leave them vulnerable.

"It must have been terrible for you," Blitzwing ventured. Starscream was pinched and withdrawn. "The things their Prime did to you."

"He took myself from me," said Starscream, still quiet. His clenched fists belied his seeming calm. A terrible emotion boiled under his still surface. "Made me forget who I was."

"Did he hurt you?"

"Yes."

Blitzwing wanted to go over and comfort his friend, but Starscream radiated such intense antipathy to the world around him, he was like a mech who'd been torn from his moorings and was being propelled forward through sheer, thoughtless momentum.

The door clicked open.

Five mechs had been left to run the security station, left as a skeleton crew to run the Temple while the rest went to repel their invaders. Warriors they might have been, but Starscream made short work of them, all blades and fists and slashing death. Only when a sixth soldier had dived out from a hidden room did Starscream have to reach for the stolen gun, but Blitzwing was faster.

The mech died with a hole in his chest-plating the size of a fist.

Blitzwing looked from gun to ruined mech, frowning.

"Why didn't that damage happen to Prime?"

Starscream slapped the massblood from his hands. Grabbed the dead mech. "He had all his shields up, to break through that door," said Starscream in between pulling the mech corpses out the way of the consoles. "Of course that shot wasn't going to kill him. We were just buying time."

"Would you kill him, if you had to?"

Starscream looked at him sideways, something dangerous in his borrowed eyes. "What are you trying to say, Blitzwing?"

"I'm only saying that you were there a long time. And the look he gave me, when I said you were alive..."

The lights crackled and spat. Starscream turned away. "I am a Decepticon, above all else," he said, flat emotionless voice. "And tonight we are going to win this war."

"Of course we will."

Starscream settled into the main console, hooked himself into the Temple's network, and brought up the Autobots' pitiful redoubt. Half their energy had been expended protecting their treasures from their untrustworthy soldiers rather than the true glory of fighting. There was the Autobot Senator Guar, in all his finery, dressing down an underling for an infraction.

Guar double-took at the unfamiliar face staring up at him from the glass.

"Now, Senator, you looks so different than you do in Tesselax's chambers, mass-deep in one of his cattle."

Guar exploded into a silver-frothed rage. "You Decepticon slag, you will not speak to me of such filth!"

"Now, now, Guar," chided Starscream, "this conversation is over unless I speak to your officer in charge."

"You will speak to nobody! Slagger! Pit-spill filth!"

Starscream hit a switch, and the screen became blank but for Guar's startled blue optics. After counting several seconds, he pulled the power sliders up and the lights returned. Voices shouted out of sight, demanding answers.

"Just so that you know where I am, Senator, you will get your O.I.C."

"It's me," spat Guar. "I'm in charge here."

"Don't make me hit the anti-intrusion measures, Guar. Unlike Autobots, our people are willing to die for their cause."

Guar was ready to argue further, but a hand fell on his shoulder. Deep voice that murmured something in an unknown language, and Prime slid in front of the screen.

Blitzwing saw Starscream's body stiffen, his hands grip reflexively at the arm-rests. From Prime there was no emotion, same cold glare from hooded optics, battle-damaged mask thrown up.

"Starscream."

"Prime."

"Talk."

"You get safe passage out of here, through the Space Bridge. But the Temple belongs to us."

Behind Prime, muted cries of disbelief. Prime said, "No."

"I didn't say you had a choice."

"I didn't say I was bargaining."

Starscream hitched a breath, then spat something at Prime that wasn't even Cybertronian. An Earth organic language, in a metal-on-metal squeal. Not a curse. A conversation. He was telling the Autobot Prime something. A confession perhaps.

It had an effect, perhaps not the one Starscream expected. Or maybe he did, for whatever he said was incendiary, and terrible. Prime roared in anger, raised his fist, punched the screen.

Darkness and static. The feed faded. The tension fell from Starscream, almost a sob, before he straightened up. "Now we know where we stand with them. It's time to turn the tide."

Starscream left the console, began to catalogue the rest of the equipment in the room. Blitzwing stayed still for a moment, watching the blank screen. Curious. He spun the information through his alters, who all reported the same thing. There had been true anguish there. Whatever Starscream had told Prime...it had been devastating.

_Did he hurt you?_

Yes.

More curious still. Blitzwing gave Starscream a surreptitious glance, before leaning over the console and folding the screen away.

* * *

TBC


	28. Self Preservation

Twenty-eight: Self Preservation

* * *

Elita on-lined suddenly, as if she'd been slapped by an urgent hand. There was silence here, and the walls became translucent, and her awareness escaped her to an Eclipse night, the rare cycles of darkness falling over the Temple, a Temple invaded and enslaved, a Temple gutted and broken, the stars shivering blue.

"Oh Optimus," she breathed. "What's happened here?"

"Elita?"

She returned to herself, turned to see another mech on an adjoining cradle, and almost didn't recognise him. So much time had passed. "Jazz," she said, after a time. "My Jazz, my child soldier! But you've aged so!"

"It's been a while." He reached out a hand and touched her mantis-arm. Honourable Jazz, who saw and accepted everyone. Pure mech, Insect caste or Beast moiety, all the same to him. No mystery that this had been Optimus' best and closest friend. She reached over with her anthro-arm, the uneven rigid surface of an epoxy field dressing making it look like a great grey paw, and touched him back.

"Fealty, my friend. Now," she sat up, looked around at the plastic hoardings, the metal staples, tasted the deep levels. "Where are we?"

"Some kind of temporary prison." Jazz pointed out the futzing doorway where plasma bars had once held firm. "But not any more. Something's happened. There's not power enough to hold us."

"And why should you be held?"

"Don't you know, Elita? I'm a criminal now, I've been charged with stealing the Matrix."

There was a fathomless toll of infrasound, a deep bell being struck. Elita and Jazz exchanged looks. "Intrusion countermeasures," she said. "Last line of defence. The Decepticons have gotten deep."

"I think they hold the security level. It's why we've lost power."

He toe-nudged the diagnostic device next to him, and it melted into a puddle of shards and spikes before reconfiguring into a neat mech of average size and clean line.

"Is it over?"

"Long way from that. Perceptor, you've met Elita? She was the Temple Oracle-"

"Is," Elita corrected. "I never resigned my position."

Jazz gave a short bow of apology, and Perceptor sent out a welcoming cyberemonal cloud along with a corollary blue-note pitch, acknowledging her status. Elita was charmed, gave him her most hideous grin. "You know your manners, soldier," she said, grandly. "You're an Alpha, I presume?"

"Yes, the Tarn science division of..."

Elita flipped away his caste titles with a gesture. "Enough. I can see it in your face. I knew Alpha Prime, you understand." She was aware of the faint antipathy in her voice, tempered it with a modifying harmonic. "He wanted to breed a race of mechs in his image, an army of Primes." She ran the blade of her insect arm across her mouth. She looked askance at Jazz. "One cannot steal a Matrix of Leadership, or force it to do anything it doesn't want. It takes a Matrix to make a Prime. It chooses where it wants to go."

A commotion outside disturbed them. Elita padded to in the shelter of the doorway, looked out.

The air congealed, and the unmistakable dark robe of a Thaumaturge slid before her, materialising out of subspace.

"Talix!" Elita spat. "Wherever things fall apart, there you are."

"Stay where you are, _Oracle_," said Talix. "We have no need of your meddling. This is the Prime's business."

"Prime?" Jazz joined in, trying to sit up from the cradle, unsteady from the remains of a stasis block. Perceptor helped him, and they were three against the priest.

"Let us pass, priest," said Jazz. "We need to see Prime."

Like most Thaumaturgie, Talix had forgone the protective cover of colour nanites, seemed grey and naked under his cloak. Ossified as a corpse, a dead thing. "You will see nothing, traitors. The Prime only exists to keep the Matrix in stasis."

"What sacrilege have you people fallen to?" The Prime _is_ the Matrix of Leadership. One body, resolute!"

"Do not argue your wicked theologies, Oracle. We have cast aside your sinful words. Soon the Matrix will take its place in the Temple Proper and power will return to the Thaumaturgie."

Further on, the sound of a small commotion rattled off the hoardings. An unfamiliar voice was echoing down the corridor. "We can take out the security section. We'll be blind, but it will destroy their advantage. They'll only have their own comms."

"No."

"They have to _die_, Prime!"

"No! Let me think, Xaaron, let me _think!_"

"Optimus!" screamed Elita.

His great, anguished head swung up and he saw her, and it seemed that the strength left him, before he staggered towards her. "Oh Elita, oh Primus."

In situations like this she was thankful of her build, her larger than average size, the additions had made her strong. She could hold his weight, and trusted also in Prowl to yell at the others, "Give him space, get out of here, haven't you already been given your duties? Go do them!"

Talix sneered at her, before sliding away again.

"Nobody told me you were here," groaned Prime.

"Come into my chambers," said Elita. "They may not be as extravagant as you remember them, but there is still solace here."

* * *

Jazz stood by the door, gave them privacy. Outside, a pair of nervous Autobot generals were waiting for word of the Prime's condition. They would have to wait.

She let Optimus speak. Most of it she had already guessed. He had fallen into wildernesses, the brutal geography of love, fallen hard. He had experienced things his body, a body constructed for war and battle alone, had not been prepared for. Joy and pleasure, for all that he'd given this to Starscream, or thought he had, he'd received it back tenfold. He had never known these things, not really, not even with her.

"His deception. This plan. Its complexity." He clung to Elita. "I was warned. I was warned and I ignored the warnings of my friends for mere body-pleasure." His confession was made in infrasound so deep even she could barely hear, _"I am not fit to lead."_

"What did he say to you, Prime?"

He shook his head.

She could remember him as he was when she first met him, a spark-child in an adult's frame. It had seemed, back then, almost wrong to sparkshare with him. He was too young for it, really. The nuances of his own body were confusing - the newness and rawness of it all. How was he supposed to have understood the revelations of another? Beyond cruel. But the Thaumaturgie had already had him sparkbroken. As always, Elita was left to clean up their mess and salvage a Prime from a wretched spark-child.

She held him now, affection and distress combined.

"You weren't to know, Optimus. Don't blame yourself."

"I think he reminded me of you," said Prime, begrudgingly. "You should have been in charge of the Celestial Temple, but the Council and Thaumaturgie blocked you at every turn."

"That is true."

"You never stopped trying though. I think sometimes, that I was part of your campaign to regain power."

Now it was Elita's turn to be unsettled. Her armour plates gave a cicada-rattle as she rubbed them together.

"It's all right," he continued, "I am a Prime. It is to be expected that I am used to further others' goals."

"It did not mean that I did not love you. And love you still."

"I doubt I ever been loved. Not properly. Not without the Matrix getting in the way. I am unworthy of it Elita."

"Don't say such a thing." She held him close again. For all that he was maudlin, he spoke too close to the truth. The rank of Prime obliterated the name of the mech attached to it. She decided then, not to tell him what she knew of Starscream, his motivations. The way the Decepticon had responded to her, his overload to Optimus' voice. In the deepest pavilions of her spark she debated it.

_This is no future-sight. You do not need to keep this admission hidden._

But still. Such knowledge could change the course of history. What use was it for Prime to know how great his loss was? If Starscream had to die, better he die a traitor to Prime, than his one true chance at happiness, squandered. The Celestial Temple, the Autobot race. A sum more important than its parts. Optimus needed to burn off the softness, be a Leader again.

_And you will be Elita-Two, or maybe even Elita-Three, for all your sight has misled you. There was a chance that Starscream could have been the God Soldier of your sight...but if he dies, the last link to your talent is gone._

Inadvertently, she stroked Prime's pectoral plates, just above the Matrix. An old habit. Prime lifted his hand to open them, pleading optics, a mech crushed and broken.

"No," she said after a second's thought. "It would do us no good."

He withdrew. Elita suppressed regret. No, she'd done the right thing. Optimus was flayed with emotion now. Not an outlook she wished to share with her own Pit-brittle spark. She needed her mind clear while deciding what to do next. They were under siege, and Starscream had just played his cruellest hand, crippled Prime psychologically so that he would not think straight, would make a foolish decision, condemn then all.

_"What did he say, Optimus, to ruin you so?_

Her crippled senses only picked up the organic language of his exiled home. Earth language. She did not know it. But there were ghosts of Prime's reactions all through the multiverses. Elita watched with her smeared other-sight. He had pounded the video screen with his fist, pounded it until the glass was dust.

The others had watched Prime's meltdown the yellowing light. There was still some power left. A few of the guards had managed to get zero-point generators through the Space Bridge before the scar had healed. The generators were degraded by the journey through infraspace, depleted of energy.

A noise at the door, a polite clatter of old gears. Jazz spoke softly to their visitor. Xaaron stood there, with his servant that held him upright. The servant's segmented little legs creaked under the weight.

"I have just finished explaining to the others, what has caused such a passion in you."

Prime glared at Xaaron, and the Councillor continued, one shorting optic seeming to wink. "Your sparkbonded consort had been taken captive along with our Ur-Thaumaturge. Held hostage by the two Decepticons."

"Mirage," said Jazz with a groan, "I knew he'd get into trouble."

Strange lilting chorus to Xaaron's voice as he continued, "Several mechs have been bonded, even among councillors. That, or their comrades have, and they know how it is, to be so worried, so vulnerable. They understand."

A moment, and Prime knew that Xaaron knew, how deep his hurt went.

"We can't do anything to the security section," said Prime thickly. "We can't sabotage it, or use heavy ordinance on it, or anything that might weaken the structure."

"Yes, we must preserve the lives in it." Harmonic gone, Xaaron added, "I just hope you know what you're doing, Optimus."

He nodded, stood up, turned to Elita. Grasping her insect limb he said, "Thank you. I know what to do now."

"Of course you do," said Elita, and managed a smile, even though her other-sense was not sure, and issued a long warning cry.

* * *

The walls shivered, stopped, and then shivered again like an animal shaking off fleas. Arcane gave a long, low moan of terror. Mirage sat, stoic. The glue had fallen off one blue eye, and he stared at them in aristocratic abhorrence.

Blitzwing paced the floor, agitated. "They're using percussive on us. One step out the door and we get shaken to death. We're trapped in here. "

"It's automated," said Starscream casually. "In another cycle the generator will have to go into a recharge - we can move on then. Those priests in the Temple Proper aren't going anywhere."

As if in answer, the walls shook again. A wire dislodged in a dark corner, raining fist-sized sparks.

Starscream sat back in the control seat, scratched his shoulder finials and flicked away a dried leaf of paint so that a red smear disrupted the glossy black surface. Suitable, now he was about to emerge from his chrysalis of night. He inspected the sharp planes of his wings, was pleased at their span and strength. Soon he would be able to change, pull himself into his alt-mode, recolonise their tender surfaces with a protective colour-nanite layer. He would be whole again.

The wide-cast comms were coming in fast now. The individual militias confirmed access control, power, and utilities of their area without the need for a centralised station.

Blitzwing named each one as they reported in: "Cog Bend, Teeth-And-Gears, Underhall routes Five and Six - the others are insignificant - all seven Central Halls..." Starscream waited until each group responded, even the one in the Council Chamber himself.

- _This is the High Council Pavilion. We're on-line. Good work Skywarp._

"It's me, Soundwave."

- _Starscream?_

A moment of silence. Searching for something to say perhaps, that wouldn't alert his beloved leader.

- _How did you get in there?_

"Have you forgotten already, Soundwave, or are you too busy crawling for Megatron's approval to think for yourself? One of us had to secure this section. Why are you so surprised it ended up being me?"

- _"Megatron will not be happy."_

Starscream almost exploded in a temper, but held himself in check. "Who was it that conceived this idea? Who was it, in all the years Megatron languished in an Autobot prison?

Soundwave made a noise halfway between annoyance and agreement.

- _I will tell him that we have secured the Temple. But he will want to know what is happening to Decagon._

"Tell him I'm working on it. Now pass the message on. I'll contact you when we're ready for the next phase."

- _Of course. Out._

Blitzwing slid in next to Starscream. "Soundwave is right, you know. Megatron won't be happy. Especially when he realises he forgot this part of the campaign."

"Another example of his mismanagement."

"You need to be careful, that's all. He's still mad about his hand..."

"Hand?"

It was one of several things affecting the triple-changer's sanity. Blitzwing went into a rambling story of Prime's chest, the way it moved, the way it had devoured Megatron's hand, skipped between all three of his alters, and every one of them was scared. He was a mech familiar with trauma, but having three selves meant it took three times as long to recover from it. In constant flux, he had never slowed down and come to terms with the earliest ordeals of his life.

"Megatron will seek revenge. He'll want to hurt something. He's hurt you before."

Starscream's mouth inadvertently pulled into a grimace. Megatron. Mass-sharing should not have been part of their _association_. There was no friendship between Megatron and Starscream, no affection to warrant intercourse. They were two mechs holding together a disparate organization that was forever on the verge of falling apart.

Once, when they had at least been on speaking terms Starscream had asked, "Why are we doing this? I'm certain Straxus never made you do this."

Megatron had cuffed him for insolence, but there were always answers from his dark brother.

_"Some prophecy or something,"_ Skywarp had said. _"He hates mass-sharing, don't you notice? Once he was so quick, I don't think he even got inside me. Not that he ever releases his mass enough to get any sensation anyway."_

"I haven't really thought of it," Starscream grumbled in reply, declining to mention the number of times he'd lain on his back, so bored at Megatron's huffing and exoskeletal scrapings that he'd ended up reading the laser-etched graffito on whatever tunnel, conduit or scratch-hole they'd found themselves in. Megatron never released much of his mass from the confines of his body.

Skywarp continued, _"He was so mass-neutral I might have well rutted with one of Soundwave's mechounculi." _He snorted with laughter at the idea, blowing bluecake all over himself. He wagged his smallest finger at Starscream. _"Laserbeak would have a bigger massling than Megatron, yes!"_

Skywarp had never been terribly bright, or curious, but Thundercracker was his opposite, and had picked up more cues.

_"Leader-Consort intercourse is an Autobot affectation. A remnant of a past life. I'm sorry you have to deal with it, but he'll get tired eventually and move on to other concerns. He did with the pair of us. Even set Skywarp up as his Seeker Consort for a while, before you came to us."_

"Whatever for?"

"Traditions, I suppose."

"Autobot traditions!" Starscream had almost spat the word.

Thundercracker had shrugged, more circumspect than his hot-tempered brother. _"He's a creation of the Temple, Star. Created to replace a Prime. Long before the current one arrived, this Optimus. Megatron believes himself cheated out of the Matrix of Leadership. He likes to pretend, I think, but he's a construct of old Cybertronian stock. Sexless and mechanical."_

Yes, thought Starscream, but sometimes he could be savage, especially if his berth mate failed to arouse him.

Still scowling, Starscream turned on the viable light cameras. Decagon, the Iacon fortress, was a darker, brooding thing opposite the Celestial Plaza, a smaller offshoot of the Dome. Apart from the Space Bridge chamber, and the insignificant Underhall holdouts, the last of the Autobot resistance were holding fort in there, waiting for a commanding word. (_But your command is gone, fools, everyone's dead_.)

Every so often a citizen - hard to tell their political alignment from this distance - would brave a Plaza-run. A few made it. Others were vaporised by munitions from either side.

Blitzwing spoke like a conscience at Star's side. "What do we do now? We can't make a move forward - Decagon is impenetrable."

"We'll wait until the anti-intrusion methods stop." He turned off the shivering monitor. "Otherwise they can stay in that sarcophagus until they die. It's all the same."

He looked over at their hostages. Arcane slumped, but Mirage blinky-blinked in rage.

"They may not fall so quickly," said Blitzwing, "if they know the Prime is alive."

Starscream didn't reply at first. Blitzwing tapped his fingers together, a nervous tic he'd never quite shaken off in all his training as a warrior.

"This may be our sarcophagus too. You have enraged both Prime and Megatron."

"We are not going to die, Blitzwing."

"What did you say to him, Star?"

Starscream made a great pretence of looking elsewhere, said absently, "Is there any more energon in that dispenser?"

Blitzwing shuffled his hand inside it, dragged out the remaining white gel, broke it in half. Blitzwing chewed on his half, while watching Mirage and Arcane on the floor. "Sorry," he said to them, swallowing the last of the gel. "There's not enough to go around."

Mirage shouted muffled curses, and Blitzwing gave him a swift kick, spoke back in their shared tongue.

So they waited for the percussion to finish, and for a long time it did not. Coming down from the excitement at securing the Security Centre, Starscream's quick mind wandered, restless. Seeing Prime again - that had been difficult. The power of him, the molten metal scoring off his shoulders and thighs, rivers of silver, tracing his frame in heat. _My Lord, my lord._ Starscream had needed to be strong. Needed to remember who he was, to pull the trigger.

It must have been the flex of the wall, the deep vibrations of the percussion generator, but he was distracted. Tugging, empty sensation in his abdomen. Starscream squirmed. Straxus, Prime had been magnificent. He'd almost forgotten how Prime looked, since all his time blind. The broad shoulders that belonged to a pit fighter, the deceptive narrowing of his waist, legs built for strength and speed, more athlete than fighter. The room was hot with the counter-intrusions, echoed with the flickering lights of the assorted monitors and video screens, layers of information, meaning nothing. In boredom he twisted, agitated in his seat. Straxus, he'd had lovers in the past, but never like Prime, never.

Blitzwing was arguing with his alters. "We're not going to die, not going to..."

What if he'd given in to his weakness? Imagine Prime on him, fierce weight pressing him down, rocking his weight into his body like a pendulum swing at the centre of the world. Starscream mashed the back of his hand across his lips, hating himself for thinking of his enemy when he'd chosen a higher path. He looked sideways at Blitzwing. _He won't say no._ Starscream rubbed his thorax. This muted sound. He was hot in cool places. The emptiness sung with the repetitive percussion, infrasound shockwaves, rhythm and sway. Blitzwing had always been a little in love with him. Wouldn't ask questions. Would just do.

"Blitzwing," he said, in Decepticon song-language. In the reflective glass of the monitors Starscream saw himself as Blitzwing would, expression on the edge of manic, madness and lust, eye sockets like burnt smudges, lit by those strange, borrowed optics. He was no longer beautiful, but perhaps the damage gave him a raw nobility that had been hiding behind symmetry all the time.

There was no question as to what Starscream wanted. He watched Blitzwing cycle between confused and excited and grateful, and above all scared. He didn't care that their prisoners could see, they would be dead soon anyway, and maybe even them.

Blitzwing came forward, picked Starscream up, laid him on the floor with care, and Starscream spread his legs in abandon, his protoflesh shining from his opened armour. The resonance of the floor pulsed through him. He imagined Prime there, the garland of liquid steel spilling over his shoulders, imagined his battle rough hands pulling his knees apart and when hot mass flowered in to him he shrieked with pleasure and hate. Enemy, enemy, inside him, the metal falling on him and cooling, sharp lance of pain with each thrust and counterweight fall. Starscream squirmed and arched his back, crushed his mouth against his wrist to stop from crying Prime's name...

* * *

...and was not Starscream, this mech beneath him, who panted and squirmed, lost to sensation. Stroked himself over his spark, this mech who was normally so cool and proper in mass-sharing, optics winking off, seizing Blitzwing by his hip spurs.

"Oh Straxus, spill into me," Starscream groaned. His hands splayed over his pelvic cradle, "spill into me..."

Gasping with awful understanding Blitzwing withdrew. His arousal drained away as completely as if someone had sliced him open and let his mass pour out.

"What are you saying, Star?"

Starscream sat up. The lubricant seep from his body made him shine. He stunk of protoflesh on the verge of overload, of a creature switched on to desire. He spat, "Are you going to argue this _now_."

Sullen, and aware of the attention of their two hostages, Blitzwing said, "This isn't like you."

Starscream came forward, tried to straddle him. His breaths were heavy. His optics were elsewhere. Saw him but wasn't seeing him. "Spill into me, Straxus, you know I want it."

Blitzwing recoiled. "Star..."

Starscream scooted away. "With all your talk of dying and you worry about moralities?"

"You've always been fastidious. You never took spill willingly. Not even Megatron's."

"Rust you." Starscream picked himself up off the floor, lust festered and turned spiteful. Streaks of chrome-pink between his legs, on his armour, the remains of his compulsion, cheapening him. He looked like some Dead End trash, trolling for clients and burnt energon. Blitzwing was profoundly embarrassed for his friend.

He was not the only one. Starscream turned on their prisoners and screamed, "_What are you looking at?_" in Decepticon hate speech, and then in a crude Autobot dialect. "I proved you right, you worthless Autobot slagger! See, I rutted with another and you watched! You tell your Leader that. You think I care? You tell him I'm finished with him! You tell him I'm a Decepticon now!"

"Starscream?" Troubled, Blitzwing stepped forward. He knew this painful place, arguing with his alters when they all disagreed, but Starscream had always seemed so solitary and secure. How could he share some internal conflict when there was only one mind in his body? Blitzwing couldn't imagine it.

Starscream tipped his head up, dark face limned with the shifting lights of the display panels. "The generator's stopped."

"We'd better go," murmured Blitzwing. "We'll take them with us."

"We'll take the Thaumaturge. The other one's no use."

Blitzwing moved for his weapon. Starscream shook his head. "He's got a message to give."

Starscream tore off the epoxy at Mirage's mouth. Mirage launched into a tirade, "Oh, I'll tell him, I'll remind him. He'll wish he'd never touched you!" Cunning, hate-filled stare. Mirage was not stupid. Mirage knew what was driving Starscream into this ouroubouros of self destruction. "We sparkshared when you left. You know that? Did you feel it in that rotten lump of coal you call a spark? I did to him what you never would. His true desire was always to share his spark. It was done. With me. The loop has closed. Did you think he was going to wait for you? A Prime wait for a whore? I am his consort now."

Starscream's face seemed to go rigid with shock. It was Blitzwing who came forward, balled his fist, hit Mirage into silence. "You shut up! Shut up!"

He remembered, so suddenly, the quick, strange emotion that had passed between Prime and Mirage. It made no sense at all. The sparks from the station rained down around them, and Starscream stood silent and inviolable amidst the falling fire.

_Oh Star, what did he do to you?_

Starscream heaved Mirage upright. "You go. You tell Prime what you want."

Mirage stood up. Despite his bound hands and bruised face he still managed to radiate threat. "You won't succeed. You Decepticons will be crushed beneath Autobot rule."

"Say this now, while bound, and the Autobots cornered and defeated," said Blitzwing.

Mirage sneered. The doors opened, giving him an access. He paused on the brink of freedom, as if about to say something, changed his mind, and was gone.

* * *

TBC


	29. Sacred Things 'Part One'

Twenty-nine: Sacred Things

* * *

_I give myself to you. I allow you inside me, I give you mastery over my life..._

The sacred words, unspoken words from the Codex. The redacted words, spoken by none. Except if a Thaumaturge died. Talix heard the murmurs that completed Primus' song to Unicron. Felt the tones seep into him like rust and spoil. Felt the press of the dagger-spike on each shoulder, to his lips and to his side, the Wound-site.

A robe was placed on his shoulders by one of the Acolytes. Talix felt its weight. The garment was similar to that worn by the other priests, in that the construction was similar - a delicate interlocking mail of black titanium.

Then the differences. The titanium rings were replaced by platinum in parts, rendering the garment in symbols. A polyhedral shape affixed to the sinister side was the representation of the Wound that Primus received. A gold whorl on the chest was Iacon, and the Council Pavilion dome.

"_This is the Mantle of Primus' Surrender to Unicron. Do you accept his burden?"_

Talix shifted his shoulders, said, "Yes." Reality was encroaching now. The robe didn't fit so well. Too large. Was ragged down one side where the stitching had torn. Probably meant for a mech approaching throttle limit. Its quality was still evident though, as would befit a ceremonial garment from the era of Alpha Prime, before the dark eras of Omega and Guardian.

_See, Arcane? I hold the title of Ur-Thaumaturge now._

Even as the Thaumaturgie continued their mummery, Talix wondered at how easy it had been. The Decepticons had entered through the Temple Proper, a place so sacred it was never strongly guarded, though nobody was to know that unless they wandered those ancient halls. Of course the Autobots would defeat them - he had no doubt about that, but Arcane would be dead.

He rose to his feet and continued the response verses. He could see himself in the golden walls.

The sacred dagger was placed in his hands. One couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment. Just insulation foil wrapped around a small coring tube. Not the kind of glory he had imagined when his time finally came, but with all the sacred relics still sitting up in the Council Chambers, one had to make do.

Despite the shabbiness of the surroundings, Talix was filled with a sublime grandeur. With Arcane gone, he was Ur-Thaumaturge, Order of the Lever and the Fulcrum, Guardian of the Blood of Primus. Around him were the other ten members of his moiety, and the three Acolytes who had survived the incursion. Where the other Thaumaturgie were - it was not worth the time thinking of them now. If lucky, they had managed to make their own escape.

Bar one, the others had unanimously voted for him to take up the role Arcane had vacated. Only old Prion had complained, "Arcane may not be dead," but was shouted down.

"He is dead. If the Decepticons have him, he is dead. We need a new Leader."

"These were not his wishes!"

"Arcane was weak!" Talix had argued. "He couldn't isolate the Matrix from Nova, had it moved into this succession of automatons and abominations when it should have returned to the Temple! He has weakened us. Who else will have the courage to make alliances and do whatever it takes to maintain our power?"

Talix's processors were hot with schemes and enterprise. Soon the Matrix would be installed in the Temple Proper, soon he would rule all of Cybertron. There would be changes, oh yes, the remaining Oracles would be banished from the Underhalls, Decepticons would be melted in the fires of the pit, the foul Insect and Beast-caste mechs throttled and put to work in the dark-side of the Planet, where their half-breeds belonged.

Acme, the Bearer of the Blade, placed the sacred dagger - or its proxy, rather - into Talix's hands and said. "This is the Tooth of Unicron. We give our allegiance to you. Now go and introduce yourself to the Council." Flicker of hesitation in his optics. "And their Prime."

Talix nodded and marched into the Operations centre.

Guardian Prime's laser-etched eye seemed to follow him with - what - accusal? He dismissed it as a pattern-ghost of the chanted words from the Codex. The sacred words could do things to a mechanical mind, the coded password to apotheosis. He was only seeing things in the multi-dimensionality of an Ur-Thaumaturge.

There was Optimus, the one they called Prime, leaning over the central table with the others. He seemed to shimmer, as if in a heat-haze.

Prime turned his terrible gaze upon him, and his eyes were _golden_, a poisonous yellow, like a mortar flare, and he could see the Matrix in him. Through the armour, the heat of it, the folds and fingers of mass and energy.

Off to one side he could hear a raucous screeching, a crow of delight, a voice in that filthy Insect Tongue saying, "You fool Talix, what have you done? Did you not think there was more at stake besides a succession?"

Talix couldn't speak, his mouth closed, his body convulsed upon itself. He fell to his knees. Everything turning golden, everything in flux, then finite, then just stopped...

* * *

Mirage ran. Any minute now the generators would start up again and he would be shaken to gears and bolts where he stood. He had to get word out to the others...

But the Thaumaturgie were in danger. He didn't know Decepticon speech well, but well enough to know that they were headed towards the Temple Proper, the holy of holies, the home of the sacred Priesthood.

He internal-commed as best he could. The messages were lost to the electromagnetic void. He flipped out of visible light, knowing that such a move sapped his energy reserves, but if he was seen, he might as well not have bothered escaping at all. Fear gripped him, and he scolded himself. He was an Alpha-caste, descendant of Alpha Prime. The cy-genetic codes of Warlord Alpha Duex still directed the processes of his body. If not for himself, then he would be brave for his Ancestors. He would not let them down. If he was free, then he would do his duty, to Autobot kind, and to the Matrix.

He calmed himself and committed to memory all he had heard Starscream and Blitzwing say. Cog Bend - that was the scholar's station. Teeth-and-Gears - the soldier's garrison, so one could assume that they were all inoperable. The Underhalls? That was good intel. Only two out of the six underground conduits were confirmed as taken. Which meant that the denizens of the slag-pits were holding their own. Decagon was fortified and surrounded, but had not yet fallen.

"We still have a chance," he said to himself as he bolted along the unfamiliar corridor. He recalled his military training, knew that the remaining Autobots would fall back to a secure redoubt, most probably the Space Bridge chamber. One could never be sure what was going to come through a space bridge, so the area was as secure as Decagon. The emergency operations area would be set up there, yes.

Then at last the corridor opened up and he was standing in the Great Hall of the Council. A hundred Decepticon soldiers thronged about the golden floors, and in the centre of them, as terrible as any race-memory of Alpha Duex, stood Megatron himself.

* * *

"What in Primus' name is happening to him?" asked Emirate Xaaron. "I can't have my remaining priests collapsing all over us. We're barely containing our wounded."

Elita picked Talix up by the collar-strut, gave him a good shake. The priest groaned. One of the acolytes stepped forward, and Elita gave an insect hiss, warning him off.

Perceptor unfolded the armour from one fingertip and stuck the diagnostic key in Talix's neck. "I'm not really a medic," he said, "but he's definitely gone into twilight."

"He'll come out of it." Elita was dismissive. "He has spoken the words of the Codex. His cyberchemistry has changed. He is Ur-Thaumaturge now."

Emirate Xaaron turned to Prion, difficult enough for all that age had ossified him.

A static sigh. Ignoring the looks of the other priests, Prion continued, "We haven't yet confirmed Arcane's death. Talix is aware of this, and he still went ahead anyway."

Prion was older than most of the Thaumaturgery, had come into the Brotherhood late in his life. His history was as smeared and corroded as his body. It was rumoured he had been influential in the No-Spark cult back in the era of Alpha Prime. It explained his low rank despite his age, why younger mechs had overtaken him within the brutal politics of their religious administration. Yet he still had a history with Xaaron. They had shared more than war and words.

"You were aware of this," snapped Elita, "and yet still you chanced fate?"

"I voted in the negative, Oracle."

Elita nodded. Of all the Priests, Prion was perhaps the only one she did not disdain.

"The _light_," groaned Talix.

"Yes, you fool, it's the Creation Matrix you are seeing. Did you think the Thaumaturgie control Cybertron? It is the Matrix that rules us."

Prime stood back and watched as the spiritual leaders of the Temple argued. He was always cautious about interfering in religious matters. His hesitation was a deep scar from his first days, that ghastly time before he won the right and respect of a Warrior. Talix had always been rough with the forks when putting the Matrix on display. Seemed almost vindictive, every time he snagged the living fragment and dragged it out from behind Prime's spark. Prion was less ruthless, had always been preferable in that humiliating ritual.

Oddly enough, for all that Arcane had served as the Ur-Thaumaturge and the head of the Autobot Religion, Arcane had never approached the Matrix, and left underlings to administer the rites. Could this be why...?

Elita answered the question. "You see now, Talix? Arcane would have told you that the Matrix was too much, if he planned for you to succeed." She stood up, "Who among you did he tell? About the mysteries of Primus' relic?"

Shuffling feet. Angry glances from beneath cowls. Finally Prion sighed and came forward. "He told me. That once the Codex is spoken to you, the Matrix is then seen in all its glory. They were words too powerful for us, so we expunged them from our lexicon."

Elita came close to the drooling, disoriented priest, "I would think, Talix, that too many things that have happened today that are to your advantage..."

A shout from the control desk interrupted her. One of the guards waved Prime over, "It's Mirage, Prime, he's made it through."

"Mirage?"

Jazz grabbed Prime's wrist. "You don't need to speak to him."

Prime patted him down. "I am still his leader."

Internally, he heaved a breath and went to the monitor. Even in the scratchy, static-laced image Mirage was almost grey with power-loss, but his optics glittered with triumph. "Prime."

"How are you calling us? All our comms are disabled."

"Pair of 'Cons not looking where they were going," said Mirage. He looked around, apprehensive. "I don't know how long I can call on their channel, but you have to hear this. We've not lost, Prime, there's still a way into the Decagon."

Prime motioned Prowl over. The console operators got to work as Mirage continued. "They have control of the Pavilions, where Megatron is right now, and every entrance and landing bay in the Temple. But not the Underhalls. The Decepticons have only contained two, which means they found four of them tactically worthless - from _their_ intel of course."

Prowl stood over Prime's shoulder, directed a pair of operators to bring up a schematic of the Temple Dome from the archives, waited until he could check for himself.

"Maybe they are worthless," said Prowl. "Tunnels One through Four are just service conduits. They don't go anywhere."

Mirage shook his head, which took some effort. He was listing to one side like a barge taking in water. "They didn't go anywhere when the plans were drawn up, and probably not when the Temple was built or for years after. But the Oracles have been living down there since they were banished."

A discernable hush fell on them. All optics turned to Elita, anxiously tapping the floor with her mantis arm.

"...I remember," said Mirage, "Because I'm an Alpha. The Oracles were as powerful as the Thaumaturgie back then, and there were many among our number."

"It is true," said Elita. "We were powerful." Low look at Talix. "And then we weren't."

"Oracles can speak to each other without the need for internal-comms, radios, anything." Mirage shouted through a wail of static, "They can manipulate sub-"

He was gone. Prime didn't know where to put his feelings of gratitude. Mirage had just changed the course of their battle from some mechs holding out and waiting for their hopeless end, to a real plan of attack.

"Can you do it Elita?" asked Jazz. "Can you contact the Decagon through another Oracle?"

"If there were any left."

"Yes," said Xaaron. "There are several individuals in the Decagon who gave up their status to join the Autobot Army. They would still have the talent."

Despite his paralysis, Talix managed to blow silver froth in annoyance. Clearly the thought of ousted Oracles returning to the Temple in any form was appalling to him.

Elita visibly shook. "My talent," she said, "My dead sight..."

"We believe in you," said a voice, and another joined in, "we believe in you, Oracle," until it became a murmur, a sea-wash of agreement. Elita held her anthro hand to silence them.

Prion spoke. "I believe you also, Elita. For many, many ages you were never wrong in your prophecies. Your sight was clear. Perhaps it is not your visions which failed you, but in the language you needed to speak them."

Elita started at Prion, never expecting support from an old enemy.

"I'll try. I'll try! But I need silence, from all of you. There's an Oracle in the Underhalls, almost as powerful as me. Her name is Chromia. I will try and reach her first."

"Good," said Prime. "Clear the room, all of you, unless you absolutely have to be here!"

With some reluctance, the gathered mechs left. Prion and Xaaron trailed out like the last soldiers in a fallback. This could be the start of their victory, or their surrender. Jazz and Prowl stayed close to Prime, and Perceptor moved to the console-table, began to bring up some of the apocryphal Temple plans, the ones constructed from rumour and legend.

Elita sat down, crossed her legs, and immediately went offline. Exchanged glances, a scent of worry.

"She's busy," said Prime, trying to sound knowledgeable, but failing. "She's gone from this linear-time, but she's still busy."

Prime sat on an armoured weapon crate in place of a chair, and watched her intently. No movement showed across her armature, nothing to suggest she was more than a shell with everything inside frittered away into the subspace voids. He heard the clack-shuffle of mechs moving about in the next room, Jazz and Prowl giving updates that were not much more than _nothing yet_.

Perhaps it was all the waiting. The crackle of tension in the atmosphere, the pain of it. Something in his face prompted Perceptor to encroach on the silence, "What did he say to you?"

Prime tore his attention from Elita. "Don't speak his name Perceptor."

"I'm not stupid Prime. He loved you. I know he did."

Prime stood up, suppressed rage making his joints ache. He didn't bother to keep quiet. "He _used_ me Perceptor, manipulated me. All this. The take-over of the Temple. You. We forgot what he was, what he was capable of. He was the blasted Decepticon Leader whenever Megatron wasn't around, and Megatron hated him. Hated. And could never kill him. Was forced to make him second. Deceit and treachery is all he knows Perceptor, _all he knows._"

He pulled away, covered his face. He was cored by acid. Starscream had said, _"Mirage was right. From the beginning. You should have listened to him."_

An unholy anger had coursed through him then, as now. Worse than dying, worse than-

"- I've got them!" Elita gasped, "Chromia, Fireflight." She turned bright optics towards Prime, pointed at the console desk. "Bring up the stories, the Planar Tetrology."

"They're just morality tales," said Prowl. "We tell them in the Garrison." He dropped his voice, "To tell you the truth, some of them are a bit risqué."

"And illustrated. There's a path that leads from the Decagon to Temple Conduit Three."

"Come on. Just stories," said Prowl, having lost the argument, but in his stubborn way hanging on.

"Maybe so, but Chromia is leading an army there right now."

* * *

It was easy to be awed, thought Starscream, by what one saw in the High Pavilions, and the Temple Proper, that knotted centre where the priests lived and practiced their dark trade. Kokular, the Decepticon stronghold on Cybertron, was no place for relics, not with the smelting pools that emitted their noxious, corrosive gas, and the hot corridors limned with rust.

The atmosphere was cool and acidity regulated, the perfect environment to store things for a very long time. The floors and walls were no longer metal, but a crystalline black stone - marble perhaps - with gold inclusions like jagged circuitry, catching glints of half-light. The aisles of the Temple were kept in a permanent shadow, with chemical pinlights spilling half-moon glows across the veined floor.

Arcane's strength returned to him once they crossed the threshold into the holy of holies, and began to make an attempt at struggling.

"No, you must go no further!"

"And why is that, priest?"

Arcane was beside himself in a panic. "No-one outside of the priesthood has looked at the sacred relics. Not even the Primes! You must not...you can't..."

Starscream gave him a good slap to quiet him down, passed him over to Blitzwing, and went to look at the first of the display cases that towered above them. An impossibly huge mech glared across to the other wall at a bas-relief carved into the stone. An Autobot from their histories (Starscream wasn't sure who) sported with another, in exquisitely rendered cruelty.

The fact that the relic's eyes were gone, and his internals were hollowed out, made him all the more sinister.

"What in Straxus' name is that thing?"

"An Omega Guardian," said Blitzwing, after a pause where he accessed his race-memories.

Starscream peered at the information plate. "I can't read Autobot."

Ignoring Arcane's weak gasps, Blitzwing read it and translated as best he could. "This is the mass donor of Omega Prime...and also of Guardian Prime. Oh! So," he continued," essentially he bore the child of his child, and died from the second attempt."

Starscream scrunched up his face, offended. "Stupid mech."

In silence, Blitzwing pointed at the welded eyelets and hasps fixed to the corpse's armour, the signs of bondage. He pointed to the scar on the Omega Guardian's abdomen, where a terrible surgery had had festered and never healed.

"Perhaps he had no choice."

Starscream withdrew slightly, deep moralities touched by this great, ruined creature. Decepticons had their barbarism, but never ritualized like this.

"That's...very Autobot. Don't you think Arcane?"

Arcane was sulky. "One must maintain the Prime as an individual stronger than all other."

"All Primes have been created out of suffering," counted Blitzwing. "Alpha, Omega, Guardian, Vector, Nemesis and Nova. Oh yes, that is why this planet is _rotten_."

"How can you say that," Arcane was still pitifully trying to defend his religion's travesties. "You cannot begin to imagine what trials we must endure to serve the Matrix! It is a cruel and terrible god!"

To the sound of Arcane breaking down they moved on, and Blitzwing saw it first, two mechs, side by side, and a third...

Arcane groaned.

"Straxus..." Blitzwing cursed. "Star, you have to look at this."

Starscream turned away from a mech-sized torture device and froze. "No."

"It's _him_ Star, look, three of them, all in stasis. They're not dead!"

Arcane let out a long, thin wail, as if he was mortally wounded.

"Optimus," breathed Starscream. "They all look like him." He grabbed Arcane by his arm, pulled him close. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Nemesis Prime," Arcane wept. "They are his children."

Blitzwing translated, "Oberon, Overwatch and Odin...they are Nemesis Prime clones. It says here-" he touched the data-plate- "that he cloned himself, tried to have offspring just like him, rather than sully his primogeniture with the gene codes of another."

Despite the gruesomeness of it, Starscream was impressed. "They all look like him, yes. But what was all this propaganda about Optimus Prime being a Monster, a corpse reanimated? This little story frightened many a Decepticon spark-child."

Arcane shook his head as if he'd had caustics poured into his eyes.

"Talk, or you'll lose your tongue."

Arcane was weak, and talked. "The clones still had elements of the Matrix in them. They were good Autobots. But we had to cull them all. Except him." A shaking finger was raised to the pale body of Oberon. He looked so much like a pale version of Prime that Starscream had to avert his gaze, stay in control.

"One went missing. We found him in time."

"Orion."

Both Arcane and Blitzwing stared at him.

"He told me. The last time we were together." Starscream was sullen.

"There were those on both sides of the war that did not trust one of Nemesis' progeny to carry the Matrix," Arcane spoke as one who had lived with a huge burden and now wanted to be rid of it. "Oberon offered to take up the mantle of Prime, but he was assassinated before we could start the process. We only found Orion by chance. A traitor gave him to us. But we feared the Dark Prime in him. Whoever controls the Matrix, controls us all. We let the Matrix wither into stasis inside Optimus Prime's chest. He cannot communicate with it. Neither can we. Perhaps it is already dead."

"So, this is why you wanted to take the Matrix out, to restore its glory and solidify your power over Cybertron?"

Arcane shook his head, miserable. "Talix's endeavour," he whispered. "It was his idea. But I know the Matrix is lost to us. You speak the truth, Decepticon. We are a dying race."

_Talix?_ Blitzwing shrugged, internal-commed, _another priest maybe?_

But Starscream's optics became bleached and severe. "I know who he is."

An odd look crossed Arcane's face, a surprise and quick anger. "He is known to Decepticons?"

Starscream tightened his hand on Arcane's arm. "He was the reason I was exiled from my people in the first place. That Autobot filth is working with Megatron."

* * *

Talix had regained enough of himself to start speaking, and it made not a lot of sense. "Arrest him!" he mumbled through froth, "he's stolen the Matrix!"

"Oh, shut-up you," mumbled Jazz in English.

"Talix doesn't know when he has lost." Elita bobbed down to his level. "Do you?"

Gimlet stare, but Elita was not easily cowed. "Don't you understand? You have made plans and plans. You always wished to be Ur-Thaumaturge. I have wished to be a leader too, and I recognise ambition in others." She returned his glare. "How much of what has happened tonight part of your machinations? It seems terribly convenient."

"Elita..." started Prime, nervous now. Nobody ever spoke to a Thaumaturge in such a way, especially not the Ur-Thaumaturge. Even Xaaron conceded to him. Prime had faced down Decepticons and exobiologicals alike, but his early programming crippled him.

"Optimus, you just wait right there. He cannot hurt you." She returned to Talix. "Optimus was protected on Earth. Vector Prime's expatriate law. You couldn't touch him. Oh, you tried. Even in the Pit we heard of your edicts. His visits to Cybertron were as official Earth Envoy - he was untouchable then. Only when he went to Prima's palace could he legally be under your jurisdiction, and be taken into custody. How could you make him go where he had no reason?"

Behind Talix, Perceptor swayed as if he'd been caught in a crosswind.

Talix's mouth went from slack to snarl. "His... Decepticon... _whore_."

"Someone had to give him reason enough to go."

"Elita..." Prime said again, broken.

It was Jazz who stepped forward. "Megatron. Megatron was the one who left the clue to the palace, an old colleague of Starscream's. We thought Starscream had left a message for us. So we went."

Talix almost imploded with bottled-in rage. Elita sat back.

"You have tried to control the uncontrollable. But just as you used him, he has used you, and here we are. The Temple overrun, and you left with the mess of your conniving."

"Lies," snarled Talix through his paralysis. "Your sight is dead! It died with Nova, died when he gave no heir."

Her optics flickered into grey, before returning. A voice said, "Optimus," but it was not her voice. Deeper tones, a gruff vocalisation.

"Bluestreak?"

Not-Elita turned to Prime, her body like a marionette on strings. Her voice dropped an octave. She peered up as if from under Overseer's chevrons. "Prime, we're here. I'm speaking through Chromia. She's at the Decagon. We need some updates on what's happening."

It was strange, talking to Bluestreak through Elita. Somewhere outside these walls a similarly affected Oracle was mimicking Prime through Elita's eyes.

"Thank Primus you're alright."

"We had good training." A pause. "And a good leader who made us do it despite objections."

Prime nodded. It was a compliment, and Bluestreak was like Prowl in his stoic Overseer's way. Did not give them often. Prime nodded. He was not one for pride. He had trained them, prepared them even as the Autobots were victorious and the Decepticons nothing but a memory. This he had done, even though he'd been ridiculed for it, But all that training had been for their benefit, not his.

"Blue, I have a phalanx of Temple guards here in the Bridge Chamber. All the advantage points are Decepticon held. Megatron is at the Pavilion."

Elita nodded, channelling Bluestreak. "We've gone over our strategies. We could send a platoon through the conduit, but it's narrow, one mech at a time, and not big ones either. Servant-class. We're limited to sabotage crews."

"That's all I need. As soon as we have hold of Megatron, he won't be able to give instructions. They'd be in disarray."

"But the Pavilion is big."

"Yes it is. Which makes it less defensible from an attack. If we co-ordinated our engagement, we'd effectively split their fighting power in half."

"That's supposing that they don't regroup under other leaders."

Prime had a revelation then. "They have no other leaders. Megatron effectively deleted them all."

"Except Starscream..." _His name. Raised gun. But his eyes didn't not belong to him, or perhaps they did..._

"No..." Prime shook his head. There were machinations and politics he didn't understand here. "He's in the security section, last I heard. But he may have moved on to the Temple Proper."

Elita, channelling the Autobot general, frowned. "Why go there? Thaumaturgie. Nothing special. Old relics, nothing with any military value."

Prime rubbed his mouth with his thumb, aware that another creature echoed his movements deep down in the Temple's core. It was a strange feeling.

"I'll detach a separate crew to search him out," said Bluestreak. "Once both are down, we'll win this war."

Before Prime could speak Prowl pushed himself forward, "Blue, make sure you send your best fighters." He turned to Prime, apology and concern roiling across his face. "And make sure you kill him this time."

* * *

TBC


	30. Sacred Things 'Part Two'

Thirty: Sacred Things (Part Two)

* * *

"I have to be realistic," said Blitzwing. "I can't see why we have to be here."

Oddly enough, Arcane didn't have to be restrained. He ambled along after them like an Autophage on a movement search, a broken 'bot. There had been a moment, after his revelation, after Starscream had revealed Talix's allegiances, when Arcane had exploded into life, driving his palm into a display case and screaming Talix's name like a curse-word. Blitzwing had had to hold him back, and Starscream watched it all, stored it for future reference.

"There is much you don't know, priest."

"That traitor! Miscreant!"

A knife-slash smile. "He meant for you to die. Meant for us to kill you in return for him giving Megatron access to the Temple. But you see, we have not." He leant in close. "Where is your loyalty now?"

Arcane reeled, became docile. All the escape went out of him, and he followed Starscream like something imprinted.

Whatever hand had guided the builders of the Temple Proper, the central nexus from where the Dome spiralled out, he had not continued his work further into the dome. A different architect had directed here. The stone and precious metal gave way to black steel in stark geometries and planes, haphazard rivets holding together jagged laser cut scales. It seemed like the space built for a monster's cavernous redoubt. Osmotic wind moaned through gaps in the upper spaces, an off-kilter moan in darkness.

Even Blitzwing, with all his disdain of the culture which shunned him, dropped into a stunned, reverent silence.

"Primon built this with his own hands, from the armour-skin of his parent Primus," said Arcane in a near whisper. There was a hole in the roof. Silvery eclipse-light filtered down on his colourless face. "Even as his hands bled and the wound appeared in him, he made this place, made it as a container for the Matrix. Some said he was trying to rebuild Primus, reunite the Matrix with a true Prime..." His hands lifted in supplication. Blitzwing threw an impatient with Starscream, who only shrugged.

The priest staggered forward, lost to rapture, and fell to his knees at a central icon. Not so big, only chest height to a standard mech. A cradle protruded from a plinth, and reminded Starscream, oddly, of a clawed and desperate hand reaching from the Kokular smelting pits.

"He wanted the Matrix here, wanted it in the Temple, to restore this planet to life." Arcane keeled forward, pressed his cheek to the ground. "This goes deep. So deep. Into Cybertron's centre, its spark-heart..."

Nonplussed, Starscream stepped over Arcane to the icon. He had never believed much in legends. Obviously the Temple centre had been built as some kind of central tower by primitive Cybertronians, and through superstition had never been built upon, not by all the races that followed. It was a common affectation among sentient species.

He peered into the mirror-shiny liquid in the palm cup. Bare wires poked out of the soup, suggesting something had either been taken - or was to be installed.

He dipped a bold finger in before bringing it to his lips. Tasted the liquid, spat it out.

"What is it?" whispered Blitzwing.

"Tastes like Massblood." Starscream grimaced. _Like Prime._ "Something living was to go into here."

"The Matrix," Arcane murmured, as if he was grieving. "Primon could not finish the Temple, so brought the Matrix into himself. Took it, and took the Matrix from us."

"I've no time for your primitive stories. Where's your Reliquary?"

He spoke the word in Decepticon, which Arcane didn't get, then a similar word in Insect which meant _museum_.

Arcane lifted his head. "Looter," he said. "Is this what you wished me for? To pillage and steal?"

"I'm not here for treasure, priest. Take us to your relics, and you can be on your way."

"Star..." protested Blitzwing, but he was waved down.

Devoid of choice, Arcane rose from the floor and shambled away down one of the aisles.

Several steel doors lolled open like loose exoskeletal plates. The reliquary was the last hide-out of the Thaumaturgie. It was where the Decepticons had gained entry, lead by Talix's information to the weakest spot in the Temple defences. It had been no place for a last redoubt. Plasma burns on the relic cases, corpses of servant-class 'bots, a Thaumaturge with a charred smear over his shoulders and no sign of his head.

Some of the cases had been opened. Not by smashing the locks, but opened purposefully by someone who had the key.

"Alpha Prime's garment," gasped Arcane. "Gone! How could he!"

Starscream ignored the Ur-Thaumaturgie complaints'. He moved from case to case. Smoke damage had obscured the glass, it was difficult to look inside. Arcane wailed in his grief louder now, a tuneless ululation in a familiar language:  
_Oh Primus, all I am, I give to you._

A dagger pang of sense-memory, and Starscream turned from his relentless searching, struck Arcane. "Shut-up! Don't say those words!"

Arcane stared at Starscream, then his optics narrowed. Despite his hysteria he became cautious, could smell cyberemones of high anxiety from him.

"How do you know the sacred language, Decepticon?" Arcane rubbed his mouth with his hand, went on. "You are Starscream. You were held prisoner by the Autobots for a time." Narrow stare. "Is this what you said, in that Earth-tongue, to that Autobot soldier? There were rumours that Prime had taken a Decepticon slave-lover. I dared not believe it. It was beyond an obscenity."

"I am no slave!" Starscream hit him again, and Blitzwing had to step forward, chirping in concern.

"Star, you can beat him up all you like, but aren't we here for a reason? And if not, shouldn't we be getting back to the Pavilion?"

A moment's hesitation, then Starscream dropped his balled fist. He turned with a snarled smile to Blitzwing. "We'll be going back to the Pavilion, yes we will."

He cast the prisoner aside, went back to his searching. Why did this decayed museum have so many useless things on display? Starscream motioned Blitzwing over. "Help wipe off the soot, I need to look inside these cases."

"You shouldn't feel so bad about it," continue Arcane, halfway suicidal now, mad light in his optics. He was past caring. His mind had gone. "Nova was just the same. Had a predilection for gladiatormechs. He would make them fight, take the victor to his berth regardless of their injury. The more wounded the better. In time I dare say he couldn't overload without it. Was that it with you? Who did you defeat, for him to give you berth rights?"

"That's..." Starscream raised his fist again, and a memory was dredged out of him, that day on the range, when he'd defeated the Autobot soldiers...and Mirage. Prime had stunk of arousal them, cyberemones steaming off him, wired to the point of shaking. They'd gone back to his berth and that was that.

"He's shorted his wires," said Blitzwing. "Crazy talk."

Starscream let his fist fall. Leant in close and hissed between clenched jaws, "I defeated his promised Consort."

Arcane stared at Starscream, on the edge of speaking, before falling back into a daze and mummery.

Blitzwing tapped his fingers together, said in careful Decepticon, "What did you say to Prime, back in the security room?"

Starscream made a big show of inspecting some ceremonial daggers. "I told him the truth. I told him Mirage was right. What is it to me if a Prime ruts and spills into me? What is it that I recoil at his touch? I do it all for Decepticon glory. This incursion was all part of my greater design."

Blitzwing was quiet. He knew this part of his friend, but to hear it said with such vehemence...

They moved on from case to case, stepping over the bodies until finally Starscream froze.

"It's here."

"What?"

The case was nearly as tall as Starscream himself. A filtered light gleamed from behind the soot, white-energon clear. Starscream pulled open the lock, was caught in brilliance before fading. Starscream reached in and returned, and now his arm was extended three times again with a rapier of wounded light.

"Star Sabre," groaned Arcane.

"Is that what you came here for?" cried Blitzwing, astonished. "While the Temple rages in battle you came here for a blasted _sword_?"

"Yes," said Starscream, slashing the air with it, and even the very atoms were smashed together, causing blue fire to ribbon along the leading edge. He drew the edge of the blade along his forearm, shouted in triumph as the metal bit deep, scarred him.

The triple-changer recoiled at the self-injury. It was as if Arcane's madness had become contagious, and Blitzwing was afraid of infection. "What is that thing?"

Starscream sought out Blitzwing, took his shoulder, kissed him hard on the mouth. A soldier's kiss, not a lover's.

"I will remember your loyalty. Now, it's time to re-join the battle." He tightened his grip on Blitzwing's shoulder, brought the Star Sabre close so the sizzle of strange-particles and antimatter almost burnt them. "I wish to see Megatron again, mech to mech, face to face. We have matters we need to discuss."

* * *

Prime divided the guardians into equal teams, had them memorize the coordinates on the map.

"At exactly eight-point-three-five minus nine, Bluestreak is going to blow the doors to the Decagon, and there will be a corresponding charge laid here, in the unofficial Deca-Pavilion run. Immediately after that we will commence our attack _here_ and _here_ and _here_. It'll be a melee fight, no fancy moves. The primary Decagon troop body will take a good tenth of a cycle to reach us across the Sky Road, so your main focus is on engaging as many troops as possible. Give them a chance to get across the plaza."

Some, however, were to stay behind. The Senators, of course. Xaaron. Perceptor was no fighter. And for all his size, neither was Skyfire. The large mech didn't quite seem aware of his surroundings, hunched in a corner, whistling mathematical coordinates to a nonplussed Astroscope.

"Mad," the small mech said, aside.

"Look after him," Prime had commed back. "He's been through a great deal, and deserves our respect."

Emirate Xaaron inspected the troops, Senator Meridian pouting along behind. If he had an opinion, he politically kept it to himself.

"This is a bold move, Prime," said Xaaron. "I wish you luck."

"We'll win this. We'll get this planet back."

Xaaron laid a hand on Prime's shoulder. "'Til all are One."

"'Til all are One," he murmured, and was echoed by a hundred voices.

Now he ran with Jazz and five other soldiers to the scholars' conduits, a narrow pipe that would lead them into a small library nook directly over the Pavilion.

Deliberately, he had taken the youngest and most inexperienced. Once the go-signal was given, it would take them several minicycles to make it to the battlegrounds, and perhaps find them a measure of time. He had sent too many young Autobots to their deaths. Each one weighed on him. Even now as they navigated the web work of girders that made up the inner-dome, sent mech-vermin running, he thought of the ones he'd lost during his reign. A terrible thought came to him. _This war is killing us as a species. Even if I kill Megatron...it won't stop._

"Blasted vermin!" one of the soldiers whisper-swore, when his handhold for a strut was replaced by a scurrying, segmented thing with six legs and a scorpion's tail. The vermin tried to lash its stinger into the guard's hand.

"Wait! Don't throw it away," said Jazz. "Pass it here."

"Take it! Disgusting thing."

Jazz held the mech-vermin by the stinger, dropped him into a spare pouch. Prime didn't bother to ask why.

A small balcony overlooked the Pavilion floor, big enough for a scholar and an assistant. In former days, it would have been she that delivered the rules and edicts of Alpha Prime. With seven warriors, and one of them near throttle-size now taking up the same space, it was a tight squeeze.

One of the Temple guards gave Prime half-glances of awe and horror, before turning to Jazz and saying, "Sir, you're bonded aren't you?"

Jazz nodded. The other soldiers murmured among themselves.

"What's it like?"

"The best feeling ever," said Jazz. "You feel complete as a mech."

"What if you died?"

Jazz huffed a breath at the impertinence of it. "I will have to take care not to."

Prime turned aside. It was a life he had abandoned, one where joy was a possibility. Tonight he would do his duty to his people, his rank of Prime, and the thing in his chest.

_Kill him this time._

All counting down with an internal clock they stilled, and Jazz's finger tapped his thigh for each microcycle. The time came...

...and went.

"What's going on?" hissed Jazz.

The others shook their heads, waiting for the explosive charge at the secret entrance.

"Perhaps we could radio..."

"No," said Prime, "They'll pick up anything but short-distance internals."

Jazz touched his chest. "I'm getting frustration from Bluestreak. Something's gone wrong."

"How...?" Prime started, and realized that Jazz at one time been close to the other mech, in a time when his and Prowl's rocky relationship had been at their lowest ebb. To be able to access such a tenuous emotion was something only reserved for the ones you were closest to.

Below them, the bored Decepticon voices had picked up in interest. Like Starscream would do, the whistle-click voices went up an octave.

"Jazz is right. They might have found the entrance, but there's a problem," said another soldier. "I had...uhh...relations with a Decagon tactician once." His optics whirled in his head. "They can't move forward, they need more time."

Jazz opened the pouch at his hip. "I knew our little friend would come in handy. Time for him to do a soldier's duty."

He carefully prized open a tile in the sloping wall, made careful aim, and with all the seriousness of dropping a bomb on a target, released the vermin through the gap.

If he found his mark, it was a good one. A sudden shriek and squeal of indignation, a staccato laugh, and in perfect counterpoint to an explosion that roared through the pavilion. Even their bolt-hole shook metal shavings.

A bellowing cry rang out, the Autobot rallying scream. Jazz bumped fists with Prime and flung open the doors. Golden light poured across Prime's body as he stepped out into the Pavilion's quartzite magnificence. Far below the bright Autobot warriors fanned out into the enemy ranks. _Primus!_ They were shouting, _Prime!_ Their battle cry filled him with purpose. A bleached grey shape stepped into the midst of the fray, shoving away Decepticons and Autobots alike. At the end of his amputated wrist had been tied a flail, a terrible instrument of war that could crush through armour like cellulose paper.

_"Prime! Show yourself!"_

"Megatron!"

Megatron tilted his awful wedge-head up and could only manage to vocalize his rage. Prime had already leapt from the balcony. He caught Megatron in the shoulder and rolled away, his armour-plates hardening instantly against the kinetic forces of his landing. Megatron leapt to his feet and lunged at Prime, flail swinging, the aspergillum already saturated with massblood, Autobot blood, blood of his friends, his comrades, those who died for him.

Prime felt that same awful peace come over him when he was fighting, for all that he was a warrior like no other, it was as if his awareness was put to one side, gently, by a greater force that said, _you are not needed now_, an imposition that took control of his arms and legs and his sense. No matter how many times Megatron would strike out with the flail Prime would move aside with a grace that belied his size, his reactions and speed defying the very laws of inertia and gravity.

Another lash with the aspergillum, and this time Prime caught it on the return stroke, hauled Megatron to him. With his remaining hand Megatron drove his fist again and again like a battering ram into the delicate armour at Prime's side, but Prime only shouted mad laughter, put the pain aside. His body was constructed of pain, once (once) he'd glimpsed a life where that was not so and it was a lie, this was his true self.

He was in this moment, all the times he had fought with Megatron and won, and Megatron discovering that the only way to hurt this monstrous Prime, their junkyard golem, was indirectly, but not anymore, Prime pulled the sword from his back fused it with his arm, and roaring, drove it into Megatron's stomach.

Megatron bellowed, more humiliated than wounded, the vermillion mass spurting, then hardening into a cicatrix of scab. The only advantage he had over Prime was weight and size, and he circled him, waiting for an entrance.

"I sold him, Prime," hissed Megatron. "To a whoremonger, you could get him back, if you wanted, though he'd be so used by now you would hardly feel pleasure spilling into his waste-body."

Prime didn't let any emotion show. Megatron just cursed an empty thing, a vacuum. All around him his people were fighting, and losing, their screams becoming desperate. Where was Bluestreak and the rest of their Army?

A body fell at Prime's feet, and he saw the ruined face of the young soldier from the balcony, blue light dying from the smashed optics. His hesitation gave Megatron the entrance he needed. With a shout, Megatron lunged at Prime, and Prime lashed out with his sword. It scattered uselessly over the grey armour. It was Megatron's time to laugh as the flail curved around and hit him in the back, sending him into a dazed embrace with the Decepticon Leader.

"Now you die," he barked in triumph. "Now you di..."

Prime watched in astonishment as Megatron stopped speaking. Hot vermillion massblood splattered from his mouth. He pushed Prime away and let out a shriek of disbelief, stumbling aside. His back-armour was smoking, sliced through.

He'd thought himself empty. He thought himself immune. But he was not. Prime expected to see Bluestreak, one of the Autobot Officers, someone. Not _him_.

Time seemed to slow into a viscous crawl. Prime's awareness was filled with hurt and hateful things.

_Mirage was right. What is it to me if you rut and spill into me? What is it that I recoil at your touch? I do it all for Decepticon glory."_

"Starscream..." a warning tone. Through clenched teeth, lest he scream his name.

Someone was shouting, "Prime, Prime, help us!"

Megatron was trying to get to his feet, and failing each time. "You whore, you traitor..."

"Back off Prime," Starscream growled in static-laced English. The Sabre was extended to its full length. "It's between him and me now."

"Prime!" Prowl's voice, ringing out in alarm and panic.

Prime pointed his sword arm at Starscream. "It's not over!"

Starscream took the stance, and his weapon glanced hard light. "This is not your fight, Prime."

_"PRIME!"_

Roaring in frustration Prime backed off, waded into the melee, hacking left and right. Prowl was surrounded by a phalanx of Decepticons, further away, Jazz had been knocked unconscious and bleeding, even Elita was there, stabbing and slashing with her claw.

Prime smashed through the phalanx, leant over a pair of alt-mode Decepticons and hauled Prowl out of harm's way. Prowl fought him, screaming, "Jazz, Jazz!"

"Elita!" shouted Prime.

"I'm right behind you," said the Oracle between parries.

"Hang onto him." He pushed his exhausted Second at Elita. She locked him up.

"Primus," Prowl wailed, "Don't let him die, oh Primus don't let him die!"

Even as Prime fought his way towards his old friend he could hear the subsonic murmur, knew in his spark how Elita would comfort Prowl, say, it's all right. It's all right. She'd said it to him, more than once.

Jazz might have lain with corpses, but his bright massblood marked him as living. Prime scanned the room, saw his comrades in desperate brawls, never better than two on one, saw smaller mechs clinging to the walls to fight off airborne attacks, saw Starscream hacking into Megatron, his mouth open in rage and an emotion beyond mere ambition.

_Don't move, Jazz. Don't move..._

Too late. Jazz touched his wounded arm. A klaxon shriek, and a small, flying Decepticon dived for Jazz-

-only to be struck away as if he'd run into a wall. Like matter flowing into an empty space. Mirage appeared in front of Jazz, gave Prime a quick earth-like thumbs-up.

He reached Jazz and his exhausted soldier. Knelt down.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself." Jazz said weakly. His head tilted towards Mirage, "He's been looking after me."

Mirage exchanged a glance with Prime, touched his hand. "One day I'll prove myself to you."

Prime didn't know what to say. The battle had stripped too much out of him. He pulled Jazz into his arms and slid through the bloodied floor, headed for a sheltered corner guarded by two medics.

"Look after him, he's bonded."

"Prime...your back..."

The dull hurt in his back swelled into fledged agony, and he realized one of the aspergillum spikes had snapped off below his shoulder-strut. Massblood coursed in silver down his back and hip, down the back of his thigh. A terrible weariness ate away at his conscious edges. "I have to go back out there."

He stayed only for the seconds it took for the medics to epoxy weld his wound closed, spike and all, and he flung himself back into the battle, arm swinging, the sword fouling in armour-plates, his own body scored with blasts and blows. Megatron and Starscream had disappeared.

Suddenly a cry of triumph rang through the Pavilion. Both sides were so damaged Prime didn't know who called themselves victors until he saw the Decagon-Plaza doors heave open, and a platoon of mechs pouring though, all led by a battered looking Bluestreak, his Overseer's chevrons hanging haphazardly off his forehead, and both rocket-mounts empty.

Faced with this fresh onslaught, the remaining Decepticons turned to chaos. With their Leaders gone, their only recourse was to flee, or failing that, to turn their weapons on themselves.

A lone voice was yelling, stop them, stop them, and it might have been Prime's own, but Decepticons could never really be held captive, never.

Now that the crowd had thinned out, he could see that Megatron had fallen, his grey body mauled with wounds from Starscream's weapon. Prime couldn't tell if he was alive or dead, but the Autobots weren't taking much of a chance and had shackled up his remains with stasis cuffs anyway.

The pain in his shoulder had spread across his back now. He walked among the dead and dying, sword arm dragging on the floor, despair and anger mounting in him. One mech held another in his arms and wailed, a long, discordant cry.

Starscream had planned this.

This was Starscream's doing. He'd orchestrated this, from beginning to end.

Prime clenched his free fist, and a cry rose in him, a shout, a bellow of anger and hate and fury, "_Starscream!_"

Starscream had heard of the battles Megatron had had when he was younger, when the new Prime had risen to defeat him, and it seemed such a long ago thing that Starscream had dismissed it as a soldier's myth. Maybe it was a fault in Megatron, some weakness. But watching Megatron fight Prime, and Prime making him seem clumsy as a new-made, Starscream had began to wonder.

There had been an opening, and Starscream had pierced Megatron with the Star Sabre, the reverse-twisted energy biting through the once-impenetrable armour, and Megatron had spat massblood, and Star had twisted the blade thinking of all the times Megatron had hurt him, the day when Megatron had torn his wings from him, made him crawl in humiliation and an agony so great he didn't know how one could live through such a thing.

He might have even spoken to Prime, but his awareness was on Megatron, listing and dangerous, spitting words of hate. Megatron, their great dictator, their great Lord, who time and time again drove the Decepticons to near extinction on the Autobot shores. Megatron, who conspired with Autobots, those who could never be trusted.

"_No more!_" he'd shouted, "_No more!_"

Megatron had shrieked back, "You think your puny blade can hold me back from killing you?"

The Star Sabre was no ordinary blade. He'd heard of it as legend from Skyfire, before his Decepticon spies told him that it could be real - or at least have its origins in a real thing. A blade constructed from the heart of a dwarf-star, almost on the point of collapse, but not quite. Some variations on the story had it to be a God Soldier's weapon, others, the only thing that could pierce a God Soldier's armour.

Lord Megatron had been a construct of the last of that ancient race. He was undefeatable by a mere mech. But a weapon like that...

...existed. And a weapon like that could free them from Megatron, return them to their creed, where no one mech outranked another, where all mechs were equal.

Millennia of humiliation and hatred drove Starscream. He'd attacked Megatron with all his strength. Megatron's fighting skills were armour dependent. He would not avoid a blow, merely block it. The Sabre sliced through the plates at Megatron's arm, bit deep into his torso, cut the hard-lines to his spark.

The injuries puzzled Megatron. Nobody had injured him so. Even Prime had only defeated him through driving him to sheer exhaustion, long drawn out battles for day-cycles. Not within microseconds. Not like this. He'd only taken another slice through the abdomen, separating his lumbar circuits from his legs before falling over. Starscream shrieked in horrified exultation and slammed the Sabre-point into the back of his enemy, and would have stayed there if Blitzwing had not dragged him off, shouting, "Run, run, the Autobots are here."

The Sabre snapped off in his hand. Starscream stared at the hilt and the jag of star-glass. The rest of the weapon stayed in Megatron like an exclamation point.

Dazed by his victory Starscream dashed out to the plaza, his ankle struts brittle and loose. Blitzwing was on the point of transformation, on the edge of the high-road. Far below, the molten core of Cybertron issued a bleak, dull glow...

"Fly, damn you Starscream!" His colours were fading even as he spoke. "I haven't got the strength to carry you, you have to change!"

"My wings!"

"They're big enough!"

But Starscream knew that they weren't. Not quite. The bluecake and black energon had arrested his recovery. He was a land-mech with two planes of proto-metal weighing him down.

_Starscream!_

He turned over his shoulder. The fog-dust of war rolled and parted. A massive shape was stepping out, inexorable, optics burning. Starscream saw him rimed in mass and gore, some of it his own.

"Starscream," Prime yelled, "Starscream." Massblood ran down Prime's sword.

Starscream tightened his grip on the Sabre's hilt, even though there was nothing left for him to use.

"I fought Megatron. I'll fight him."

"You can't!" Blitzwing said, "Don't..." Blitzwing didn't bother to finish. He transformed and took off with a surge of fire, a massive airborne killing machine. Instead of seeking safety, he wheeled round, began firing on Prime. Bullet-tracks smashed across Prime's path, sending gold shrapnel flying. But before he could wheel around for a second strafe Prime engaged his plasma cannon, fired off one single shot.

It clipped Blitzwing's tail section, sent him careening into the darkness of the banlieue.

Starscream moved his blade in front of him, loosening up for a fight.

"I'm right here, Prime," he growled. "Why don't you turn that weapon of yours on me?"

"Maybe that would be too good for you."

Starscream could hear all around him the scatter of other Autobots taking position. He was surrounded from all sides. Plaintive notes on his internal-comms. His Decepticon brothers, mourning him.

"I have him in range, Prime," called one. Prowl, most likely. "Tell me when you're ready."

"No," Prime advanced on Starscream. "He needs to be tried. You have orchestrated this. The crimes of this incursion are upon you."

There was an angry exchange of words from Prowl - High Autobot language - and Prime advanced on Starscream, fresh wounds opening so he left a silver footprint with each step. Starscream edged closer to the edge of the sky bridge. During the normal endless day, one could not see the smelting pits two kilometres down. But now they gave off a deep, red light.

"When I die, my people will be free. I have finished off Megatron - I, myself! Not at the hands of an enemy who wishes only to rule us and bend us to their will."

_"Give the blasted signal, Prime!"_

Prime raised his sword from where it dragged on the ground, a trail of sparks followed.

"Get away from the edge, Starscream."

"You will not humiliate me anymore. Before I came to you I was a warrior. Respected among my people..." His foot found the edge of the road. The lip into nothingness. "You weakened me, made me..." His mouth grimaced. He could not continue.

"Kill him!" screamed Prowl, and a twitchy-fingered soldier pulled the trigger. The blast flew wide. Prime screamed a warning. Starscream quirked a smile. His life was his own, always. He tipped himself over the edge.

* * *

Prime turned on Prowl, his sword at his Second's throat and Prowl shouted, "It had to be done, it had to be done!"

"He killed himself. They'll make a martyr out of him! This war will never end...!"

Prime never finished what he had to say. The high road shook. The shrapnel and smoke whirled about them all in a frantic coriolis, the air laced with ashes and the diamond dust of massblood. Percussive grumbling came like the end of the world.

A massive shape rose up from under the sky-road. As in response, sunlight peeped out from behind the moon, outlined the ship in a penumbra of light. As wide as the road it landed, Skyfire disgorged his singular passenger before transforming down.

Starscream lay panting and scorched on the golden road. He'd been pulled out of the smelting pits, singed but still alive. The black paint had been scored away - another second perhaps the rest of him would have been melted. He pulled himself upright, turned on Skyfire with a snarl. He said something in Insect Aspect, and it would almost have been comical if it wasn't so fraught with history, this smaller mech shouting at the larger one.

The large mech fell to one knee, some unfamiliar words falling from him. Prime only knew enough of that dialect for the meaning. _I couldn't let you die._

Prime approached, sword drawn. It was as if everything they had done or said now collapsed on this one moment, and anything could happen. Starscream was still holding what was left of the Sabre. He held it to his own neck.

"You'll have to let me go then," he hissed. "Because I will not be held by you."

A hand fell on Prime's own. He turned to find Elita standing with him, severe, bright armour was still snarled in the serrations of her insect arm. Perhaps her visions had departed her. Perhaps she had no other recourse to turn to but her own fractured sense. Whatever will informed her, it was unknowable.

She said a word in binary language, and Starscream froze, and fell.

"He still wears the slaver's stasis belt," she said. Hard to tell what she thought, with her words so emotionless. "Had he stayed in the smelting pit, it would have been the last to go."

Breathing hard, Prime approached Starscream's prone body, the edges of his armour feeling like razors, the spike in his shoulder burning him. Wanted to say something profound. Wanted to tell him...something. Wanted to let out this burden, the burden of the Matrix crushing his spark.

"Who fixed your eyes?"

"Rst joo. Rst joo."

"Prime," Prowl moaned. "He's nearly destroyed you...and us all."

Starscream's face was not like he remembered. Prime remembered him beautiful. Remembered him damaged. But never like this. Not since the first day in the hangar, when he'd starred at him so hatefully. In all that time he'd never asked Starscream why he'd come to them, and Starscream had never volunteered that information.

Prowl continued, edging closer. "There's nothing you can do, Prime. If he wasn't in permanent stasis, he'll try and find some way to kill himself...or you."

Prowl moved in front of him, began to push him away. Gentle, but not. His soldiers were moving inwards now, guns drawn. Ready to issue the coup de grace, the final shot to end this life. Skyfire watched them in sorrow, the expressive planes of his face down turned in an old, ancient grief. Maybe he'd always known how this would end.

Prime shoved his Second aside. He knelt, leant in close to Starscream. The response codes of his body added to the geography of his anguish and he said, quiet, "After you were taken from me I tried to tear it out of my chest. You understand? The Matrix." His fists clenched next to Starscream's head. "The most valuable thing in all of Cybertron. Worthless next to your loss. You think you've suffered under me? You think you know what it is to lose respect?"

Starscream managed to turn his head. "Autobot scum. Rusted monster."

Prime stood up. His army was watching him now, all in the silence. He had to do something.

"No prisoners..." came a voice in the crowd. "No Prisoners! No Prisoners!" The voices rose to a crescendo. "No Prisoners!"

"Silence!" shouted Prime, "Silence!"

The shouts died down and the crowd parted for Xaaron. He shuffled along with a handful of Senators, including Guar and Meridian. Behind them, the Thaumaturgie. Arcane, wan and shaking, and Talix, still in stasis lock, held upright by a pair of Acolytes.

Meridian stepped into the circle afforded by the crowd. "The Council has made a decision." Green-blue arm, and imperious finger. "The Decepticon dies!"

A roar heaved out of the Autobots, primal and bordering on the edge of hysteria. Starscream was the focus of their rage, all the deaths of friends, all their struggle, all the lives they had forfeited. Skyfire visibly slumped.

"No!"

"Prime, it is an edict of the Council, it is the Law." Xaaron said, and it was as if he was pleading.

"No!" Prime faced Xaaron and the Senators. "This fight was won by my army. I claim Warlord rights."

Meridian let out a squeal of indignant rage. "You may not, you may not!"

"Every Prime can claim Warlord rights after winning a battle. One request. It is in the Book of the Law!"

"You are not Prime! The Matrix belongs to the Temple!"

Prime pushed himself close to Meridian. A head taller he was, limned in gore, twice Meridian's weight. "You wish that I should call you out for combat, for what you just said?"

Snarling, Meridian backed down.

Enraged now, Prime bellowed, "I own him! I claim him under the Warlord Law, that he is my spoil and my prize and will service me as I see fit."

"Take him as your spoil then," said Meridian, "take him to your harem, but see what the shame and anger of the Decepticons will be on you! The whole planet will rise up at the ignominy, we will be left a burnt-out husk, and all for your perverted desires!"

Starscream was struggling against the stasis, still hissing curses. Skyfire stared at Prime, beseeching him not to follow Meridian's taunts.

Prime glared at Skyfire, suddenly hating him for all that he'd shared with Starscream. _You could have flown away with him._

But he could sense in Skyfire what he could sense in all of them now. To take Starscream away was to keep them all fighting. These constant wars between Autobots and Decepticons had broken Cybertron's back. On the horizon were great billowing shadows that could only have come from exploding energon processing units.

The war had to come to a definite end, and there was only one terrible, immoral way to do it.

"Optimus," sighed Elita, "what choice is there?"

Prime stalked the circle, blade still drawn, spoke to all of them. "Everything I've done has been for you, for the Matrix. Every decision I've made. Every sacrifice I've made." To Talix and Arcane, "This one belongs to me."

"Prime, don't do anything stupid," Prowl murmured through internal-comms. "Please..."

Prime ignored him, ignored them all. With intense deliberation he picked Starscream up, arm under Starscream's own. His wings were so large now. He had to restrain himself, not stroke one, not feel its span when he was not welcome to.

He began to sing, then, a song in High Autobot, from the days of Prima and Alpha Duex. _Your life becomes forfeit/you are enemy, unspeakable/I must not speak your name/but in my every circuit your name is spoken/my brother-mate how can I stop, for to do so is to die..._

Starscream knew that song, intimately, and vocalised in despair.

Meridian knew what was going on before anyone else did. "No!" shouted Meridian, "No! Xaaron, stop him."

No questing tones. No bond in love. But a sparkbond request all the same. Xaaron looked up into a dawning sky, his old eyes having seen so many things, and perhaps this coerced wedding was not the first. His voice, when it came, was like a heretic's confession made under torture. He knew that there was no other way for Starscream to be held by them, and not risk the wrath of the Decepticons, or the seething, shifting mass of Cybertron's lower classes. The Council often ignored, but was not ignorant of the forces driving Cybertron's population.

"_Why have I been called here?"_ Xaaron almost sighed, "_Why do you wish to divide yourself so, when your strength is in your spark unbreached? I cannot allow it, to me you must prove this action's worth._"

Prime's voice grew louder, wracked with the pain of the spike in his back, the enemy at his arm, his futile wish for love, gone. _pRimus aNcient wAits oN aLL,_ was never sung like it was on this eclipse morning, dissonant and yearning, a request song made from a conqueror to the conquered. A Prime had never sung that song. Never. An obscenity in and of itself, evidence of their culture's decay.

By the time he made to _a rEquest I bEseech oF tHee_, the traditional words had to be half-shouted between gasps of breath. Starscream was almost too heavy to hold. His dark head lolled back, his whole body a palsy of rejection, the stasis belt sputtering with compliance charges.

Elita said the words to release the stasis belt a notch. The relief made Starscream fall to his knees until the song was finished.

Stunned silence followed. "Tell him you concur, Starscream," said Prime, his voice stripped and raw. "Tell him."

"Rust...you..."

Hand on his fragile wing. "Tell him!"

The wing bent, almost close to breaking. Starscream tipped to one side, gasping. "I concur. I concur, rust you and damn you!"

No cheers of joy. No exultations, no sounding of bright frequencies, no streets overflowing with celebration. Only the stink of death, a few remaining dazed Decepticons scurrying away, the smoke from the burning Temple creeping like a reptile on the high road. Mirage was the only one to make a sound, a drawn out, "no no no no," like a metronome caught in perpetual motion.

"Over," cried Meridian to the stunned crowd, "The Prime line is over! This planet will decay! The Autobot race will fall!"

Xaaron shuffled his old feet.

"Don't give permission, Emirate!" Meridian was livid with warning. "Don't allow this, or we will impeach you and have you evicted from the Council."

Xaaron stumbled, would have fallen if Prion had not caught him. The old Thaumaturge met Meridian's stare. "Wasn't it you who voted Council powers to the Thaumaturge Moieties? Gave us a controlling interest in the business of the Temple, and Government? If Xaaron goes, the power comes to us."

They turned to look at Talix, drooling and insensible, and Arcane, who only shook his head. He was no longer Ur-Thaumaturge. They'd sung funeral songs for him. His life did not negate his demotion.

Prion returned to Meridian, and Prime saw in the old priest the brute cunning that had allowed him to survive the No-Spark pogroms when others had died. His political machinations were deeper and more convoluted than Talix could ever have guessed.

"The only one left here of any rank, the only one of sound processor and mech-body, is me."

Meridian didn't bother to speak in return. He gave Prime one look, then left.

"Do what you will, Xaaron." Prion said.

Xaaron let out a strangled, "Then I concur, you may complete the bond."

The sun came out. Prowl covered his eyes.

* * *

He had lost a lot of massblood, but this was more than a mere sparkbond. This was him challenging the constructs of his life. It had been true what he said on the sky road - everything he'd ever done had been for others. His life had been measured out by others, he had been no more than a puppet. This was an act of defiance.

As they moved down the corridor Starscream tried to fight him, and the belt stung him into submission each time, and Prime tightened his grip on Starscream's arm. He could smell the fear off him, the panic froth flecking Starscream's cheek even as his bondmate cursed him. Prime knew what Starscream feared most. Humiliation. The breaking of his spark before witnesses.

In answer to an unspoken question Prime said, "You'll survive it the way I survived it."

The remaining priests followed them in a half-jog, trying to keep up. They sang the joy-song of a Prime Bonding, but it was so out of tune and nervous the song turned into a cacophony.

The scent-marks of concern picked up as they moved past the standard berth chambers, the palatial rooms set aside for the high-ranking guests. He passed into the inner Temple, the long curving corridors, the rooms set aside for all the ranks of Prime before him, the room closed off after Nova's death.

The sacred berth. Vector Prime glared down upon them, even in this likeness he always seemed to be lip-curling in disgust. Prime struck away at the steel straps with his sword arm until they hung like smashed limbs. The Thaumaturge song rose into a wail.

Nobody had been in the chambers for a long time. The fanes of Prima and Primon glared down upon the star-lapis berth. Something snapped in Starscream, an old superstition, God Soldier memory, and he broke free of Prime's grip, darted away even as the belt ran ribbons of electricity along his flanks. He fell to the floor, scrabbled at the cold stone. Mad panic.

Cold, Prime picked him up. _Mirage was right all along._

Over the priest's shoulders was the Alpha mech's pale blue face, twisted. Internal-comms broke though his code-block, an imploring, _You can still stop this._

Could he? The fight had left Starscream now. Prime picked him up and put him on the berth. One arm flung over his chest, moved easily away. They both knew this had to happen.

"I have failed, in all the ways I could have failed," murmured Starscream in the borrowed Earth language. Not to Prime. To another Starscream, in all the folds and fulcrums of space-time. The one from a year ago who had planned this attack and all that led up to it.

So this was the moment he had dreamed of. His peak moment. Prime pulled apart his chest armour, grabbed Starscream's chin, made him look at his bare spark.

"Look at me," he hiss whispered, "look at me."

Starscream's borrowed optics were vacant. He had put himself away to an otherplace, where he was not failure and spoil. With a cry of defeat Prime cracked open Starscream's chest and their sparklight combined, and he pressed his bare spark against Starscream's, and all he felt inside him was frost and blood-ash and he fell into raw experience never visited by another.

Far from here he clutched Starscream's unresisting shoulders, seeking purchase, and there were no words he could catch, so foreign they were. Past the darkness of his time with the Autobots, through the weeks as a guest of Tesselax. One memory, just one, and Prime lunged for it. He was in a room now, some vermin-scratch of a conduit. Deep machinery groaned. A familiar voice. Talix. Prime felt Starscream's indignant emotion, _an Autobot, here!_ Talix spoke in High Autobot, saying, _we both have ambitions you and I._

Don't listen to him Lord Megatron, he will betray us.

Gone, then. Just a fleeting moment. Time to come out of this place. There was nothing here, nothing a cowed mech could show him. There was too much he didn't want to see. An Autobot's death at Starscream's hand. Megatron's shoulder as he ground his way to overload between Starscream's thighs...Prime didn't want to know how that felt, didn't want to compare, come lacking, for if he'd been any good Starscream would have been won over to him.

That old sense of deficiency loomed up on him. Perhaps the Thaumaturgie were right after all.

He was a sparklover of experience, and sensitivity. Even in these conditions he knew how to bring a mech to overload, he pulled Starscream into himself...

...and it was his exhaustion maybe, the spike in his back. _When was the last time you joined like this, spark to spark?_

No...

Too late, and Starscream was taken to the ship. And Mirage, optics shuttered in overloaded ecstasy. If there had been any flame of feeling left, it was extinguished.

Transference. That dead-nausea of his overload memory. Starscream let out a breath. _So this is what it is._ Electricity crackled across their spark-casings, and Prime had to disengage. He pulled away.

Starscream lay in the illumination afforded by the gas-jets, bright radiata-scars on his new-broken spark. He didn't bother to cover himself.

The priests ran to Prime, covered his shoulders with a robe of purple mail. They began to sing again, low infratones. A song of dominance and brutality.

Prion came to his side, motioned for the Acolytes to pick Starscream up, take him away. Starscream sagged in their arms, broken. Primon's face glared down upon them. The Matrix slid deeper into the cavities of his chest.

"Do not regret this," whispered Prion. "There will be legends born from tonight. How a Prime has taken a slave and a Decepticon as his Consort. There has always been a wound in the children of Primus - that some live in opulence and the others in darkness." He smiled, took Prime's arm. "I think it is time you came to the Temple Proper, take your place in the Throne Room, take your place as a true Prime."

* * *

TBC


	31. The Third That Walks With You 'Part One'

* * *

**PART THREE**

* * *

Thirty-one: The Third That Walks With You

* * *

The corridor seemed to warp and sway, one weaving foot not quite finding place before the other on this unsteady surface. A young mech in a robe held him upright as he walked - in some other time he would have refused his help. But his spark stuttered and shorted like a burnt fuse. He walked or crawled. Better to live on your feet than die on your knees. Or was it the other way around?

He expected to be taken to a holding cell, somewhere secure and out of the way. But they took him to the guest berths he had passed on entering instead, a place decorated not unlike Tesselax's harem. But where the hangings and embellishments in the whoremonger's rooms had been cheap and gaudy, these were expensive and intricate and very, very old. He sat amidst museum dust and waited, like he always did in these situations, for the pain to subside and his clarity of mind to return.

Several cycles passed.

Starscream began to entertain the thought that maybe he'd been locked away to fade out into a low-coma, and he would join the frozen mechs in the Temple, the Omega Guardian, the Nemesis clones. But the door opened in the fullness of time. And a hand pushed through carrying a tray of white energon gels. The rest of the mech gingerly followed the peace offering.

"Star?"

Starscream glanced towards Ratchet's voice, looked at the energon, then at the floor. A pair of stylized gladiators fought to the death inside a watching circle of glass-eyes Senators.

"My brothers will be starving tonight, and I'll sit in splendour, gorging myself."

"You should eat, if you want to heal up properly."

Starscream ran a finger down the edge of the stone berth. An entire community could feed, for the cost of transport, carving and installing this exotic object alone. "Should I?"

"It's not like spark-charging. Sparksex can involve injury..."

Starscream turned on Ratchet, snarled, "You think that was what he was doing, when he tortured and humiliated me? When even my oldest friends turn me over to _him?_"

Ratchet waited patiently for the tirade to end, and when it did, he laid the energon next to Starscream. Starscream let out a sob of defeat and stuffed three cubes into his mouth at once. He chewed them in a roil of pleasure and disgust at himself and pushed the rest away.

"Let me look," said Ratchet.

"No."

"Prime won't let me leave until he's certain you're not..." Ratchet paused, mumbled, "Hurt," like an afterthought. Because Starscream was hurt. Sinned against and damaged in more ways than one. For what? To end a war that had killed more mechs than anyone could know in a lifetime? To destroy one life to save many?

They were too late. A mere bonding wouldn't erase the damage of millennia.

"Look at my wings first," Starscream said in a low whisper. "Are they of a size? How long until I can transform?" _How long until I can fly away?_

Ratchet sat next to Starscream on the berth. He moved his hand over one long plane, gently testing the size, the give of the metal-flesh. Starscream sucked in a breath. He was sensitive as he'd never been before. Wanted Ratchet to continue the touch, make him feel more than this despair. Alleviate the dead spaces in him. Ratchet, sensing trouble, pulled his hand away.

"A lunar cycle, maybe. If you eat."

Starscream leaned towards the medic, bleeding memories, his exo-dermis aching. "Please touch me again."

"Star..." Ratchet turned his head aside. "It's just afterglow. It'll fade. Don't do anything foolish."

Bitter laugh. "I've done too many foolish things." Then, "You may examine me now."

Ratchet reached out, laid a hand on the golden glass of Starscream's chest. Though he didn't quite mean to he stroked the armour seam gently, relaxed his patient before sliding the two halves apart. Starscream watched him, a strange combination of an experienced mech and a just-broken spark-child. Ratchet felt an odd affection then, as he did with all his patients. He'd worked with injured mechs, vulnerable, hurt and scared. He was used to them falling in love with him. It was just in a sentient creature's psychology to do so.

But Starscream represented a danger greater than all others. Ratchet by necessity had spent his life alone. He'd developed a sensitivity to pain, and Starscream seemed utterly constructed out of suffering then. What if he asked for that one thing? Would Ratchet, healer, be able to deny him that?

The spark had broken clean. It was not the scuff-marks of a spark-charge, which Star had carried with him since Prime had revived him in the cooling pond, but an overload-break, the electrical charge momentarily transforming the tough upper shell to a weak membrane. Ratchet had to credit Prime that talent, to be able to bring a spark-overload in such a condition. Others had spoken of Optimus' skill with the spark-bond, how he was practiced, and tender, but always at a reserve. No wild passions from a Prime. No berth-nights and erotic moments.

How different things were with this one.

Ratchet made the necessary touch-tests, and then nodded. He closed Starscream's chest and let him sit up.

"I remember when you healed me, the last time," said Starscream. "When I woke up and saw your face."

"You were in bad shape."

"I knew I could trust you then. I knew you would look after me."

"I try to be an advocate for those who don't have a voice."

Starscream grabbed his hand before he could stand up.

"Ratchet..."

The stink of trouble. Ratchet wanted to pull away, didn't want to carry this any further. Ratchet was not inviolable. Was not immune. Starscream's new-old optics had a mad light in them, as if lit by distant and poisonous suns.

"Please," Starscream said, "I can't live like this."

"What?"

Raw, confessional whisper. "There must be something you can do. A nano-inhibitor. A self destruct routine. Please. Nobody would suspect you."

Ratchet pulled away. "Primus, no, I'm not going to murder you."

"Not murder..."

"Or let you commit suicide!"

"You'd be helping me," Starscream cried, rising to his feet, "you'd be helping me. Please don't let me live like this, Straxus, _Primus please_. You've helped me before. You're all I have."

There was no subterfuge here, no double meanings. Starscream was a mech driven into captivity and humiliation. Ratchet was spark-broken. He came close, put his arms around Starscream (_this Decepticon enemy!_) Starscream clung to him, murmured his pleas in his Decepticon tongue. The seeker was only a shade shorter than Ratchet, but seemed irreparably reduced him his arms.

"You'll survive this, Star. You've survived worse."

Starscream said something in English, moaned through static.

Ratchet forced himself not to hear, and Starscream only repeated it, as if he spoke through blades and wires.

"Make love to me. I just want someone to be with me."

Ratchet didn't know how to respond. He knew this part was a possibility as soon as he'd walked into the room. He almost said yes. Because he was a Healer. Because he knew that loneliness. Knew what it was like to be torn so, that your body was an open wound and all you needed was validation from another. Was going to say yes, when the door opened and Prime's shadow fell across the floor.

Ratchet jumped away like a guilty lover, not one mech comforting another, and immediately regretted it. _Stupid!_

Starscream only looked aside.

"Prime...I didn't expect you."

For a moment Ratchet saw the white blaze of resentment in his leader's eyes, before they shuttered into blue vacancy.

"When you're finished, I want a report on his condition."

"Yes, of course."

The door closed. Slow footsteps, walking away. Starscream sat on the berth's edge. A stray lance of sunlight spangled the old floor near his injured foot.

"Star..." Ratchet started. But the moment had passed. Deep below them old gears turned, the grinding frequency of Cybertron's dying heart. It was better that they left things here, unfinished.

"I know," he said. Then, "Could you get a message out for me?"

Ratchet heaved a sigh. You could never tell with Starscream, what he needed from him. Affection, or a co-conspirator. The flash of desire soured. "I don't know. As much as I consider you a friend, the realities are-"

"-complicated. I understand."

What sort of victory was this, thought Ratchet. This chilled moment where everything seemed won for the Autobots, but for what price? They'd lost something important.

He had been told only to give Starscream as much energon as he needed, but he left the whole plate with him, and left the room.

* * *

Prime listened in stony silence as Mirage concluded his debrief interview before the investigation panel. Prowl looked suitably riotous at Starscream's treachery, but Jazz and Perceptor crouched at the far end of the long table as if they'd both been forced to gorge on bluecake and black energon.

"...then they mass-shared, Starscream and the other one, the Decepticon _abomination_. Blitzwing."

A small red mech, a beast-insect half-caste from Bumblebee's moiety, gave a polite cough. Prime recognized him as one of his Earth team. Cliffjumper. He was a loyalist to Prime and the Autobot cause, not to the hierarchy, had occasionally been disciplined for talking ill of Alpha-castes. Prowl had stacked the panel for Prime's benefit, not for the ten Senators watching from the balcony.

"They did what?"

"Mass-shared," said Mirage, uttering the offensive term flatly. The undercurrent of distaste was strong. "Him and the freak."

One of the senators leant forward in his seat and commed, "Please elaborate on this term."

Behind his mask, Prime snarled. His hands pressed into his thighs. His systems flooded with a cold rage.

"Starscream opened his armour and invited the other one to release his mass into..."

"Enough!" barked Prime. "Let anyone who wishes to investigate terms be referred to the data files. Continue."

"Ah...then Starscream informed me that he had been taken similarly by many others during his stay with the Dead-End slave trader...and I was to advise Prime of this."

The red mech's attention skittered towards Prime, shame writ large on his pale face. Internal-comms were forbidden, but Prime caught Cliffjumper's cyberemonal _sorry_.

Prime let no emotion show, but his spark felt as if a great hand were wrenching it from its moorings. Everything important to him had been made filthy. Even Ratchet had turned against him, holding Starscream with a lover's tenderness back in the berth. Ratchet had been so full of apologies afterwards, apologies that morphed into accusal. _You have to let him go, Optimus._

If patience hadn't been so firmly entrenched in him, he would have struck Ratchet away for daring, _daring_...

But Starscream was less his now than he'd ever been, even with the bond between them like barbed wire and a neutron lash.

He turned back to Mirage, made a brief gesture. "Continue."

"I was released. I managed to overpower two Decepticons to send you the message. I then proceeded to the Council Pavilion, where I participated in the battle that won us the war."

"And saved Jazz's life," said Prowl. He'd probably meant to say it as a matter of record, but his normally stoic voice broke halfway through.

"Yes."

"There is of course, the matter of what went on in the ship to Titan..." Prowl's reluctance was obvious. To praise your mate's saviour, and condemn him at the same time? Difficult. "But Prime has informed me that this is closed, and will not be proceeded with."

Mirage visibly relaxed. "Yes, thank you."

Mirage was given leave to depart, and the debrief was concluded with a short statement from Xaaron.

"...became clear that the campaign was started several megacyles ago by the Decepticon Starscream, whom we now have in custody. All the militias and sympathizers have been routed out and seized by the Special Autobot Forces. Within the vorn we will start making reparations to our society. The emergency council meetings will commence in two cycles. That is all."

Jazz started to protest, but Prowl waved him down.

Though it was tradition for a Prime to return to the Great Chair and receive the Senators, Prime stayed on the court floor. Most of the council members left Prime alone, warned off by his louring glares, the aura of his hate for all of them. Alone of the Cybertronians, it was Senator Guar who approached Prime, a sideways slither. He herded Prime into a corner, away from the others, spoke in a barely audible whisper. At first Prime thought that this was the Senator's bid for political favour, but Guar had more personal things in mind.

"I understand what it must be like," said Guar, simpering, "to be condemned for our proclivities."

Prime gave Guar a hard look.

Guar continued. "Mass-sharing is not unknown among the upper echelons of Autobot societies. Granted, it is a small and specialized perversion, but there are outlets that are discreet."

"Stop it," shot Prime, "what do you think I am?"

"I think you are a Prime. And I think you are a mech awakened to dark hungers." Guar stroked a hand down Prime's sensitive flank, making him withdraw with a grunt of caution. But he couldn't walk off, else the others would know that Guar had said something to upset him. Guar had to be the one to leave this tête-à-tête. Everything was about politics here in the Temple. No wonder he had left for Earth in the first place.

Guar laughed, knowing. "Perhaps your Decepticon consort satisfies your every need, but something tells me that he does not." Closer now. "I can arrange for a mech to be delivered. New. Never broken. Never touched by another."

"No." Prime swallowed. "I won't take anyone by force."

"Ah, so you'd rather they opened to you willingly, hmm? Is that your deep desire?"

The corner was too hot. He had to get out of here. But he was being watched, as all the Senators watched each other, searching for that little weakness.

The Senator would not leave him, roping him in with his silky-hot words. "Willing? And experienced? Perhaps a little damaged?" Guar murmured. "Who desires you and wants you utterly? Who will open his legs for you in welcome, take your mass in ecstasy? One who does not fight you, but praises you and takes your spill as if it were precious? Is this what you want?"

There were no lies left in him. He returned to Guar, said without a shred of affectation, "Yes."

Guar smiled. "We will speak again, Lord Prime."

He was gone, and left Prime where he stood, drowning.

* * *

"I can't believe that they didn't mention Talix's part in all of this!" fumed Elita. "They knew that it was Talix and Megatron who precipitated the attack."

"Elita," said Prowl wearily, "they only have one Ur-Thaumaturge. If he gets accused they lose the succession line. They are the only ones who can communicate with the Matrix."

There were debriefs and then there were debriefs. This was not the proper procedural one in the Pavilion, but the rowdy discussion in the Underhalls. If anything, Prime was consoled by the fact that he had been invited to the dim chamber that stunk of patina and rust. It could easily have been held in secret, without him, as so many decisions were.

Prion nodded, agreeing with Prowl. "Since Arcane has been stripped of his status, the Matrix will now only speak to Talix."

"So we blame all this on Starscream?" said Elita. "On - and I'll have you remember - the Prime Consort?"

Concerned trills and murmurs from the gathered mechs. Chromia whistled them into silence, but even she was unhappy at the turn of events.

"All the prophecies are proving false. We have entered into a dark time, my comrades."

"Begging Prime's pardon," said a small grey mech, the representative of the Servant's Guild, "but all this was put in place by Starscream. Us Temple servants knew of the sleepers, but low-level Decepticon activity on Cybertron is so ubiquitous, we didn't even find it a cause for action."

"This is true," said Chromia. "If we blame outsiders, than we fail to acknowledge that malicious code at our Temple's heart."

"Who else will speak to the Matrix?" someone cried from the crowd. "Is it lost to us?"

Elita tapped the floor in irritation. "Talix is cruel - and is not beyond decorating his Matrix-translations with his own opinions. I still think you would have been a better choice, Prion."

Prion's grey optics were evasive. "Oracle, although my belief is the All-Spark is pure and unassailable, my old programming still exists. The No-Spark is a concept I cannot completely let go. I could not possibly lead the priesthood."

Weary, Prime slumped in the ad-hoc throne of container-boxes and scrounged mechanical parts. His shoulder injury prickled and snagged at the rivet-sutures. The Matrix moved inside him, warning, ready to cause him pain at a moment's notice. How easy it would be to give it to the Thaumaturgie and be done with it.

"He will not speak to the Matrix," said Prime. He didn't bother to hide his stubborn tone. "The Matrix remembers what he did to it."

Prion said, "The Matrix? Or you? The forks were a necessary humiliation, Prime. In those first days of your creation, a great many doubted the Matrix had survived the transplant. Anarchy threatened us always."

Prion might have been the only Thaumaturge given welcome here among the Underhall denizens, but he was still a Thaumaturge. He spoke for the priesthood when he continued, "If we lose our line of communication with the Matrix, we lose Cybertron. It was bad enough when you went to your alien world, but this planet needs to commune with its God."

An odd silence. Prowl stood up, exchanged a glance with Jazz, said, "The Prime is tired. We will continue this tomorrow."

Once they had returned to the pneumatic elevators, and ascended through the strata to the upper reaches of the Temple, Prime said, "I wasn't tired."

Prowl turned to Prime and said fiercely, "Optimus, I've seen you try to rip the Matrix out of your chest to prove a point. For a moment there - I could smell the same cyberemones on you."

"He's right," said Jazz. "You've got to chill out man, relax." He shrugged in defeat. "Find someone to spark-share with tonight, or..." Did not speak the unspeakable, but could imaging him saying it in crude English,_ Optimus, find someone to fuck._

Prime watched his smudged reflection in the dirty surface of the elevator wall. Bleak optics stared back over the chipped battlemask. Guar's words jostled for dominance, _"...open his legs for you in welcome...takes your mass in ecstasy..._ His thorax ached from frustration and longing. He never felt so undesirable to another creature. More monster than ever. Could not conceive of anyone giving mere _permission_ when the Matrix was there. The element of choice - of being chosen - was gone. One did not give one's consent to a Prime and Matrix bearer. One simply did what one was told.

* * *

It wasn't a complete prison, decided Starscream, but it was not in any way freedom.

He explored his quarters as an excuse for finding possible avenues of escape. There were none. The berth rooms adjoined wash-racks and a training room. Up a flight of gilded stairs was a small sun-licked antechamber lined with books, microfiche on gold-leaf, a place ostensibly to receive guests and to take energon. If a page was opened the piped-in sunlight reflected across the laser-etched allegories that never left a wall or ceiling bare.

A small energon distiller in the far corner of the antechamber synthesized solar-energon. A small trio of God Soldiers danced about the golden unit, amethyst chips for optics. Starscream touched the aerofoil on one frolicking little statue, recognized his own shape.

There were no guests taken to him. The design of his captivity enforced a different servant for each day. Nobody that he could conceivably form an attachment to. He was treated in an odd, pious fashion that as a Decepticon he had never seen, except perhaps of Empties towards Megatron. A cautious obeisance, and averted gaze.

Starscream spent most of his time reading, eating, or refining his fighting moves. The blunt quarter-staff that could knock a fighter off his feet, the flat _mere_ that could be worked under armour in a close battle and cause excruciating pain, a katar with a blunt-blade. Without an opponent all he could do was shadow fight, but in that time of isolation it was the only thing that could keep him busy and prepared.

He was not always alone. Every few day cycles, the time was never the same, he was taken aside by a different coterie of servants, slender mechs, long faces, their optics removed. They spoke in the strangest language, halfway between an insect dialect trill and an Autophage binary.

The Blind Ones escorted him to a room of grey stone, where he was scrubbed to within a micrometer of nanite skin. Then a small, sticklike mech would come in, lasers on his fingertips. He tattooed Starscream's body with a fractal explosion of swirls and repeating loops so complex that it hurt to look at. The process stung, but Starscream was held fast by the stasis belt and had no choice.

As they decorated him, they sang, old codes that made his flesh quiver and jump. Same language of Prime's climax. Inadvertent arousal shamed him, the silver-smears between his armour as the etch-artist cast long loops of magnetic welcome across the inside of his thighs.

From there he was taken - himself throttled at a shuffling pace like an ancient thing - to the sacred Sapphire Berth, where he waited in trussed up glory for the master who never came.

At first he'd been angry, and maybe even frightened. It was a ritual he'd never heard of. Even as a prisoner he was starting to understand the limits and designations of Autobot Primehood, the true splendour of a Prime's reign. Now he understood that he'd experienced only a fraction of that on Earth. Surrounded by unimaginable wealth, and with behaviour proscribed over eons, he was forced into smallness. Hated it. Sworn that if Prime ever went near him, he would fight him, stasis belt be damned.

Every moment he expected Prime to walk through the carved doors, jumped every time the gas-jets flickered. But after several sessions of sitting alone on the star-sapphire, nanite skin stinging from the cleaning and the fractal etch, watched by hidden eyes, he began to sense that he was being toyed with.

Afterwards he was led away from the star-Sapphire Berth, back to the room where the etched nanites were buffed down to their original flat colour. He could hear the blind mechs make disapproving clicks at each other. He knew enough Insect from plaintalk Decepticon to crib a meaning. _Even yet he did not come to this one. It is not right that a Prime should not couple. It would be best if another was brought, a prettier mech, not so damaged._

After several sessions his stoic silence was worn wire-thin.

"How often do I have to do this?" he spat at the blind artist who decorated his armour with such a precise hand.

"Until Lord Prime finds you worthy. Until them, perhaps we must take the burden of not making you acceptable to him."

The glib reply made Starscream flare up, annoyed. "You think he doesn't find me worthy? You think he wouldn't come to me if I demanded him?"

"Perhaps."

Starscream kicked the artist away, and the smaller mech rolled with the blow, as if used to such behaviour, then, as if nothing had happened, returned to etching a whorl on Starscream's knee.

"Your Prime has been on his knees before me, has begged to be allowed entry into me!"

This did not impress the artist, who stopped, and fixed Starscream with his crushed-optic gaze. "Then call him. We have offered you so many times and he has not come." A quick bow. "It is my fault, Lord Consort, if I was a better artist then the Prime would not be displeased, and not find you unattractive to him."

Starscream pushed him away again. He almost said, "Tell him I call for him," but stopped, and held his tongue.

"I refuse to carry on this charade any longer. I'm going back to my berth."

No sooner had he uttered those words the stasis belt shocked him into immobility, and the etch-artist continued with his work.

The Blind ones carried him to the star-sapphire bed and placed his body the way a jeweller might place a stone inside a clasp, with care and reverence, and they began to sing. He was bullied into arousal, he could smell himself, feel the heat-press of his flesh against his exoskeleton. The worst fear came over him, that Prime would not come. Prove the Blind Ones right. He looked up at the two fanes in the gaslight, the severe-faced Autobot Primes, a whisp of déjà vu, then it was gone.

* * *

Every second day cycle, one of the Lesser Thaumaturgies had approached Prime and said, "Does Lord Prime wish to ready his Consort?" A strange, whispery little almost-poem in high-Autobot.

Prime had always shaken his head, mute. No. The thought of Starscream was too raw in his mind, and besides the priest had quickly departed.

He didn't want to be with a slave. He'd made inquiries, and found out the stasis-belt's unlock code.

Such things were hard to keep secret.

"You had better be certain," Senator Meridian had hissed during an accidental passing in a corridor, "That your Whore Consort doesn't accidentally lose that stasis belt of his. Because if it comes off, the execution orders will return."

Prime began to fear being in Starscream's presence, knowing he had the power to free him, and knowing that it would ultimately kill him. Pathetically he wrapped himself up in a Prime's work.

There were so many rituals and incidents that Prime was still struggling to remember. Ten priests a day would ask of him strange things: Does the Matrix wish to speak? (Not likely). Do you wish a slave brought to you? (Doubly unlikely). Who is to be executed today? (Nobody!).

Elita often answered for him. Prime depended on her more and more.

"You never learnt Temple Protocol as a _Prime_," she said to him after a biting argument with a Thaumaturge and an offered servant. "You knew it as a Matrix Bearer - not quite the same thing - and under the War Laws, as a Warrior. Primes were never supposed to fight, so it puts you in a strange position. This is what it is to live like a true Prime, with all the pomp and ceremony and isolation."

"I don't care for it so much," he'd admitted.

"We need this stability now." Elita had replied, serious. "These are dark times. You do not wish to know of the conditions outside of Iacon."

But he did. He ached for his planet. It hurt him physically to see the 'bots starving by the side of the high roads, mouths open in supplication, too weak to even raise their hands. The industrial back of Cybertron was broken, their energon stockpiles were running dangerously low, the planet was too far away from any appreciable supply. Energon could not be brought through space bridges because of the physics involved, it needed to be flown in, processed on-site.

Even his own small sufferings were nothing compared what others were going through. To crave love seemed an affront for those who craved food. The amorphous hungers of his body were an insult to real hunger. He felt torn, petty, not worth the title of Prime.

_Does Lord Prime wish to ready his Consort?_

No. Not when he knew how it would be, Starscream lying in stasis beneath him, Prime taking him in silence and shame. Not when everything was so terribly, terribly wrong.

* * *

Even under guard, Starscream's life was still delicate. Once, when his energon plate was delivered, it contained - not the white gels, but a torn hank of armour, the half-face of a Decepticon sigil. Massblood congealed in the plate. A warning.

He considered making a fuss, but instead waited until a servant returned. Starscream shoved the bloody triangle of exoskeleton into the youngster's hands. "Tell my benefactors it will take more than this to make me fear them."

He wondered if the warning had come from Prime's camp. Perhaps not, if the dual guards and the double-checking which followed was any indication.

Another time, a whisper came over his internal-comms, hacked in. "Once Prime's attention leaves you, you won't live so very long."

"Kill me then!" he shouted to the empty room. "You know it's what I want!"

Nobody replied.

For all that he was kept locked away, Starscream knew that the time would come when he would have to appear as official Consort. In public. And he would have to confront Prime. He'd resigned himself to the fact it would not be on the star-Sapphire Berth. The Blind Ones were less dutiful and more spiteful towards him. Didn't bother to hide their language. Openly discussed likely candidates for Prime. Discussed moving the consort to smaller quarters. Starscream realized that all his status and value was based around his attractiveness. It hardened his resolve to escape. Even Megatron, for all his beatings, could not influence Starscream's standing.

He didn't expect the moment to come with Perceptor.

Starscream's spark leapt on seeing his friend. He stood in the doorway, flanked by guards. Starscream was halfway through a complicated sword-form - The Circuit that Breaks at the Moment of the Hundredth Pass - so continued the piece to its completion before finishing.

"Starscream?" Perceptor was wary.

Lubricant stained his flanks. He heaved the steel shard with exertion, dallied with the idea with turning it on the guards, but their plasma cannons would cut him in half before he could get far with his blunt toy.

"Star, your wings...they're so huge."

Too much had happened between them, and now Starscream thought of his ignorant time when he was on Earth, when despair and relief and gratitude had made him feel things that were foolish and wonderful and the first step on a ruinous road. He felt humiliated for all that Perceptor knew.

"They should be," Starscream said, tossing the useless sword to one side. "All I've done is consume energon and sleep." Clenched jaws, mouth pulled back in a hideous smile. "As well as sitting on a berth waiting for the glorious rape of your Leader."

Perceptor seemed to slump in his armour.

"There is no choice," Preceptor said in a small voice. "These things have been done this way since Primon. That's why he left in the first place."

"You never told me this on Earth."

"I never thought he would come back. Star, we were carried away by your romance with him and the possibilities of things being different." Perceptor was solemn. "When they can never be different. Everything is so regulated here." He regained whatever Autobot pride he had left. "There's still work to do on Cybertron. He can't leave now."

"That's not why you've come."

"No." Perceptor walked to the discarded sword, hefted it onto the racks with some difficulty, underestimating the weight. "No. The Neutrals have opened the duelling pits. There are games in honour of...ah...you and Prime being bonded."

Starscream sneered, said nothing.

"You've been requested to go at his side."

"And so he sends you."

Perceptor's optics rolled in anguish. "The ones in power will notice if you don't go. Those Senators will push their slimy prospects at Prime. They wish for nothing but to have a Prime Consort under their influence. They will petition him to break the bond with you."

"I wish it broken!" Starscream hissed.

"Things have gone bad since the Temple Battle. All the old superstitions and religions have taken hold. Even scientific study is frowned upon...not by Prime, but the Council that rules now are traditionalists." He glanced sideways at the guards. "Leave us."

A second's hesitation, and then a weapon was pushed into Perceptor's hand.

"Be careful, said the guard. "Shoot him if he tries anything."

When they left, Perceptor broke open the plasma cannon and crushed the antimatter reservoir with his fist. The little grain of reverse dark matter made a pucker in space-time before dissipating. He laid the disabled weapon on a nearby table. Starscream watched him without comment.

"A Consort does have some say in what goes on. You can have influence."

"Perceptor, if it has escaped your notice, I am less than a slave. I am as much a whore as if I were in Tesselax's chambers."

"You could be more than that. A Prime Consort rules Cybertron in his stead. It's written in the Book of the Law."

The smirk turned ugly. "It may have escaped your attention, but it does not escape those of others. Prime has chosen not to honour his Consort with his presence. They call me whore, but how can I be a whore if I am not fucked?"

Perceptor winced at the English obscenity.

"He doesn't want you here."

"Oh, excellent."

"I mean, he doesn't want you here as a slave, but he is as much a slave here as anyone in the Underhalls. The Council tells him what to do, where to go, who to speak with. Perhaps the only non-proscribed choice he has is whether or not to take you to his berth, to make you like...what they say you are."

His Decepticon accent made Starscream's words sound like clashing gears. "I too have chosen my path. I will not have my enemies chose it for me."

"You think he avoids you because of what you said to Mirage? Star, for all that mass-sharing is not what we do, it doesn't mean anything. You could have one, a hundred bodysex partners. It doesn't matter in the word of the Law. All that matters is your spark was unbroken when you were bonded to Prime. It's such a rare thing to share your first spark on your bonding night, almost unheard of."

"And yet here I am with a stasis belt on me."

"That is a Council decision, but you have your voice."

"I speak to empty rooms, Perceptor."

"Star, please. Reconnect with Prime. He'll fall more and more under the Senators' influence and eventually he'll just remove the Matrix of Leadership himself. They won't even have to ask."

Starscream stalked off to the washrack. Perceptor followed him. The hydrocarbon spray turned on with a hard cough. Starscream drenched himself, rubbed the lubricant stains from his armour.

Perceptor watched him from the portcullis. Starscream didn't bother to show off. In some other time and place, some other mech, he might have used this moment to seduce, use Perceptor for an escape plan.

But now he was just tired. If the scraps of conversation for the guards were to be believed, the Decepticons had finally been extinguished, Autobot rule was total, and there was no running away from an entire planet.

"The Autobots have ruled Cybertron from the beginning. Your problems are your own."

Perceptor scratched the emblem on his shoulder as if Alpha Prime's constant face pained him. "We're a spiritual people, it's true. Even the ones of us who follow the sciences. But for so many generations now we've been cut off from that."

"Worshipping your dead Matrix."

He expected Perceptor to defend his god. Was surprised when he said, "Yes."

Starscream turned off the taps. He touched the girdle at his waist and pondered on Perceptor's request. It would be little more than a humiliation, paraded next to Prime with this slave-garland on him. But there were advantages too. _I'll get out of these rooms at least._ There were more opportunities for escape outside than in.

"Tell him I'll do it. I will accompany him as Consort."

* * *

TBC


	32. The Third That Walks With You 'Part Two'

Thirty One: The Third That Walks With You (Part Two)

* * *

A heady excitement percolated through Kaon, the old Decepticon stronghold. The city's culture was built around the Games, and for many solar cycles they'd gone without, various laws and pogroms keeping their gladiatorial rituals underground and unregulated.

But now they were to be recognized by Iacon, by a Prime no less, the Council finally saying, _you too are worthy of Cybertron's acknowledgement_. Then there was the matter of the Consort - such an occasion. There were rumours that the Autobots and Decepticons had united under a bonding, and it seemed more like a wishful tale than truth, but the proof was there, Optimus Prime and his Consort.

Senator Guar was present to welcome Prime. "My constituency has been increased to accommodate Kaon," he said. "I know many of the Tribal Lords personally, and they have accepted my patronage."

Prime did not care to add that Guar's visit to the red-light districts of Dead End and the Kaon Deeps were not for politics and more for darker desires.

Starscream stood off to one side, arms folded. He was sulky despite the indigo robe on his shoulders and the gold circlet on his head, marks of high status Prime insisted he wear. Prime hadn't considered that Starscream would actually accompany him. It was Perceptor's idea.

"_He'll be safer if you're seen in his presence more often._ Perceptor had said, "_He'll hate you even more for it, but if he's not seen, then he'll lose what little status he's got._"

Prime had heard in Perceptor's tones that there may already have been an attempt on Starscream's life. Buried under protocol, there was little else Prime could do.

Their reunion had been uncomfortable. Prime had watched from afar as the servants had dressed Starscream (they managed to get the heavy fabric on his shoulders before Starscream had slapped them away, said that he would do it himself.) Starscream had shot Prime poisonous looks, and the atmosphere had been so heavy with antipathy that even the servants sensed it, and ran about with nervous agitation.

It wasn't as if Prime _hadn't_ attempted to speak with his Consort. He'd even managed to cross the room before a Councillor had quickly headed him off.

The Councillor was a flunky of Guar's. "Senator Guar has asked me to ride with you."

"Yes," said Prime, and had left Starscream with the servants.

Now they sat in the reserved seating at the far end of the Gladiator's pits, Senator Guar attending to Prime with overbearing veneration.

"Prime, you must see my fighter, Liege Maximo. He is undefeated among all of Cybertron's best."

"I didn't realize we still had rankings."

"We have always had an unofficial way of tracking our best."

"Wasn't pit-fighting banned since Nova passed?"

Guar let loose a conspiratorial snigger. "In the Deeps they have maintained the old ways. Liege comes from the Dark hemisphere. He trained in the bloodthirsty culverts of the energon docks before being discovered by my scouts."

"How interesting," murmured Prime distractedly. He was in no mood to hear about Guar's infidelities with the Law. The press of mechs stifled him, and Starscream's dour presence made his nanites itch.

Prime looked out across the duelling pits, at the milling crowd. A pair of gaudily dressed Autobots tossed energon gels into the throng. Prime could see the desperation on the faces of the mechs as they fought and clawed each other for the scarce lozenges. His spark wrenched. He turned to Cliffjumper, said, "See that everyone gets a lozenge tonight. Take it from the Kaon stockpile."

"Yes sir."

Senator Meridian was close enough to hear. "Might I remind you Lord Prime, that energon was part of the Senator's bonus. It is not meant for the Neutrals."

"The Senators aren't starving, Meridian."

As Prime turned away he caught a glimpse of Starscream's face from behind his curtain of guards. A violet glance, conflicted.

Guar moved close. "Liege Maximo is experienced. And he wishes to meet you."

There was no mistaking the sultry cant of his words. Prime's hands clenched reflexively at his thighs.

"Of course you will need an introduction first."

"I don't need anything complicated," he couldn't quite keep the panic pitch out. "I don't want emotional involvement."

Guar nodded deeply. "No. Just that he is choosy. I have only had his _acquaintance_ once-" quick look to gauge Prime's reaction - "and found him exquisite."

Since speaking with Guar at the first instance Prime had been beset by fractured longings. There was nowhere he could escape to in his mind that was not Starscream, no pleasant touchstone of memory. Apart from the shabby moment with Tesselax's slave, all his experiences were singular. His erotic cues were based off Starscream, the aerodynamic line of him, the sheen of his nanites, the density of his protoflesh, his unique colourtaste. When he could feel Starscream behind him, it made him think of that thing he missed, that brute clash of armour, the flex of meta-sinew, the grip of pleasure.

Better if Starscream had stayed dead.

"...he is powerful," Guar was saying, knowing just how his words affected Prime. "Such a strength in him. One does not have to hold back when engaging him in physical intimacies."

"Let's not speak of this here," said Prime hoarsely. For all he knew Liege Maximo looked like Grimlock and where would he be then?

* * *

Starscream watched as Senator Guar spoke with Prime. They spoke in high Autobot, but there was no mistaking what they were speaking of. The cyberemones came off Prime as if he was on fire. He saw Prime's fists rub the length of his thighs, a quick, instinctive action, but he knew what it meant. How often had he flirted with Prime in public, when they were together, back on Earth, see him make that hungry gesture, stink of need and hot mass?

And then Guar pointed, and a mech came out.

The announcer spoke first in Autobot, and the local Kaon Insect Dialect, "Liege Maximo, undefeated Champion of Cybertron! No Fighter has ever bested him in battle."

Liege Maximo was not quite throttle big, and bore the scars of some close calls, but he was a warrior nonetheless. His colouring reminded Starscream of Megatron, and his hate for him increased.

Because of the gladiator's undefeatable status, the few fights were little more than exhibition matches. Maximo fought in a vicious combination of barge-fighter chaos, married with newer layers of physical training.

Only during the one serious contender fight with a minor champion from a warlord's strata did Starscream see what Maximo was truly capable of. Prime moved in his seat. A minor councillor sitting behind Starscream said, "Magnificent, no other is better."

"I hear that he is Prime's lover."

"Where did you hear this?"

"My mass-brother tells me this. He shares quarters next to Maximo himself. For all that he talks, you would think they were already bonded."

Disturbed, Starscream watched Prime run an agitated hand over his battlemask.

Was it true?

Starscream turned to one of the guards.

"I am tired. Take me to the Annex."

The silence of the Annex, built within the terraces of the spectator's arena, was like a heavy hand laid upon him. Starscream lay across a narrow day-berth, listened to the desultory clatterbang of a fight overhead. He was restless. His unformed wings felt too heavy.

He was being watched.

Not by the guard who stood outside with the stasis gun, but the interloper who had come through unseen. Mirage materialized at the end of the daybed.

Starscream sat up with a hiss.

"Sometimes when the mighty fall, it makes no sound."

Above them, the crowd roared in an almost orgasmic, bestial howl as Liege Maximo dispatched a foolish contender to his death. Mirage tipped his head up, sniffing the savagery.

"Smell that? Our planet destroying itself. I can only thank you for that. If Prime had bonded to an Alpha, like me, perhaps we could have ended the corruption. Perhaps the Matrix might have survived."

"Always with the Matrix!" spat Starscream. "You stupid Autobots, destroying all of us over a false god!"

"How _dare_ you!" Mirage frothed with rage. "I can't think of how it pleases me to see you like this, belted up while Prime procures other mechs. Your downfall is my perfect reward! I only hope I get to see you be humiliated in public as Prime ruts with another and casts you aside like so much slag!"

It would have been a more effective rant if Mirage was not halfway through weeping at the end of it. Starscream watched him. Their lives were beginning to mirror each other's.

"I don't intend to stay," said Starscream, quietly.

"The only way you'd be let out is through the smelting pits. I heard Meridian tell Prime that if your belt comes off, then you are to be executed."

"I am aware of that. And I will take that step if I have to."

Mirage stared at him, openly awed. "You would kill yourself, rather than be Prime Consort?"

"I am Prime _nothing,_ Mirage. You made that point often enough." Starscream shrugged off the cloak. "Besides, if he does lose the Matrix of Leadership, I am as good as dead."

Another cheer from above, extended. Maximo must have been doing some kind of victory lap.

"I don't know which I despise even more, you or him." Mirage was sour and gruff. "Maximo wouldn't know what a real battle was if it bit him on the aft."

Despite all the antipathy he felt towards Mirage, he couldn't help but smirk. "Indeed."

Mirage became serious. He came close, murmured into Starscream's audios.

"I can help you leave. If you want to leave."

"How would you do that?"

"I'm an Alpha. I can access the door codes."

"All of them? There are many doors."

"I can trace direct descent from Alpha Prime," said Mirage with a broken pride. "No door is off-limits to me. I can get you out. You tell me when."

Starscream knew that this offer was not made out of friendship. Starscream was less of a threat if he was gone, than anywhere near Prime. Mirage had healed his relationship with his Leader, wanted to take it to the next level. He was still in the game where Starscream had thrown in his hand. But still, gratitude.

"Thank you."

* * *

There were more engagements, more of the same rituals of costume and following Prime's retinue like a satellite that had been caught in a decaying orbit that would only lead to destruction.

Starscream only played a part in this Autobot Theatre of the Absurd, the spectacle of wealth before poverty. He stayed, remained stoic, hid his true feelings for now. Sacred Consort, symbol. But privately, as worthless as an Empty. Starscream thought of Perceptor's impassioned plea for him to reconnect with his former lover, but Prime appeared almost vacant around him, as if he'd walled himself up against feeling anything for Starscream they could no longer even speak.

They travelled to Altihex and Tarn, to the Stanix region and the dark-hemisphere city of Gygax. Each blended into the other.

Sometimes he would scan the pinched, greying faces of the Cybertronian citizens, try and seek out a familiar face, a comrade in arms, maybe even a sympathizer. But if they had not been driven underground, they had been killed.

Though Starscream had been dreading a return to his home-city, Prime was eventually invited to Vos by Ultimal Crux, an Autobot-aligned warlord with designs on a Senatorship.

The rebuilding of Vos had been sporadic. Of all the cities it had been the most damaged, a carcass spread across Cybertron's western face. They arrived by sky-ferry, passing into the twilight zones like slipping into night. Looking down from the lead-crystal windows, Starscream caught a remnant of his past freedoms of flight. A fleeting moment of excitement, before his circumstances buried him.

Senator Guar waited on the docking-port with Ultimal. The warlord decorated in all the accoutrements of his Beast moiety. The whorled horns on his head crackled with electrical potential.

"Lord Prime," said Ultimal, bowing. "Consort," he added after a pause.

Starscream gave him a cold look.

Prime seemed genuinely surprised at Guar's appearance. "I didn't expect to see you here, Guar." A deliberate scan of the almost empty docks. "No retinue, no crowds. It's unlike you."

"The Senator and myself have shared confidences for some time," said Ultimal. "This occasion won't be so public as some previous engagements. Please, this way."

As soon as Starscream stepped into Ultimal's palatial fortress, he realized what the warlord had meant. He caught the smell of burnt energon, the wisp of artificial cyberemones.

A slave mech walked past with a burning brazier in each hand. A stasis belt was angled on their hip with a garland of bells. A quick glance at Starscream - pity perhaps - snatched away.

Some minor potentates lounged in dim corners, wreathed in smoke. Starscream looked around for Prime, found him gone, nearly tangled himself up in the robe. With a disgusted noise, he pulled it off his shoulders.

"Straxus damn-it!" he cursed, knocking into another mech who had stumbled out of the darkness.

"Watch where you're going, you cheap slagger..."

Enraged, Starscream jabbed out with a slashing hand, and the stasis belt caught the action even before he completed it. He doubled over in agony and was rewarded with laughter.

"You must thank that belt for keeping you out of trouble."

Starscream looked up into the steel-hued face of Liege Maximo.

"You..."

"I hear it keeps you out of a lot of things. Like the smelting pits."

Maximo bent down to Starscream's face. One optic was set off-centre. The right side of his mouth was scarred from an old injury. But still elegant and Alpha-handsome. Starscream wanted to spit acid in his face, would have done so if the belt hadn't shot daggers of pain into his body.

"You're the Consort? You're the Decepticon General? You're small. I thought such a one with your reputation would have been bigger."

Another mech was nearby. Laughing at him. _Laughing at him._

Starscream resisted the urge to lash out again, and couldn't tell which hurt him more, the belt or holding himself back.

"So, then," said Maximo, "I have wanted to meet you, Consort. Perhaps you could give me a few pointers on what Prime likes when in berth. What _not_ to do, because clearly he dropped his interest in you."

"He can't talk, Maximo," giggled the other mech. "Not with the slave belt on. Besides, Prime doesn't desire him. What use is any advice he could give?"

"Pathetic," said Maximo with a sneer, he lifted his foot and kick-shoved Starscream aside, and walked on. The belt gave up its control only when Maximo had passed.

Starscream limped for the nearest place to hide, bearing-stringed curtains that obscured the servant corner. He couldn't be seen, not like this in disgrace. Humiliated, he staggered through the curtain and pressed his back against the wall, burning up. With his fists he tried to wrench the belt off himself, ready to split himself in half. His disgust was complete.

Through the sparkbond he could _feel_ Prime being introduced to Maximo, feel the pathetic flare of desire in him.

"Rust you, Prime," he whispered. "Rust the rest of you Autobots, you deserve what you've got." The belt would not give, only open old weals in his armour.

"You shouldn't be here."

His despair saved his life, he came to realize later, when he looked up and saw five pairs of crimson optics glaring at him. They were not servants. Black marks daubed them, the ritual-marks of the No-Spark, the Decepticon V crudely cut into their shoulders.

"Who are you?" one demanded in Decepticon hate-speech.

"Starscream of Vos," breathed Starscream, and it had been so long since he'd spoken his birth-tongue it had a strange taste in his mouth. Decepticons? Here? He did not recognize any of them - they must have been so new, or of such low rank, their presence was ignored by the Autobot pogroms. A junkyard jumble of mechs, no warrior form to any of them. One even had the remnants of a crane hanging from his back. _My brothers..._

"Starscream is dead. You are the clone in his place, the one that the _despot_ parades around."

"I am him."

A plasma-rifle was hoisted to a shoulder. "Starscream was bigger than you. He would not have allowed himself to be enslaved. I was at his funeral. I sang the songs of sorrow at his passing."

And Starscream knew then how utterly small and valueless his living life was. These desperate rebels followed a martyr and leader. Dead Starscream, strong and inviolable, the one they all followed.

"Please kill me," he whispered. "I cannot bear to live this life."

"Can't you take your own life?"

"The belt won't allow me that."

The other Decepticons exchanged glances.

"You know our language," said the leader. "Perhaps once you were like us. But we have all come here to die, as this planet will die. You will find your time soon enough."

"Wait..." started Starscream.

But they ignored him, and as they ran out of the servant corner and into Ultimo's pleasure-chambers, Starscream saw the explosives that each of the five carried, all rigged onto their bodies for one ultimate act of sacrifice.

Guar knew what Prime liked. Liege Maximo was of a seeker-type, that long limbed anthro-mode, back struts like the suggestion of wings. It was conceivable that he had been winged once, and had had them shaved down to enable him success in the gladiator ring. Anthro-mode fighting required a certain streamlined shape. There was no clue as to his Alt, if anything. Your incept date only guided you, not locked you in. Liege Maximo had made sacrifices to his art.

Equal parts guilt and hunger ebbed and flowed in him. Primus, he thought, he didn't want to talk about mass-sharing. He could barely look at Maximo. At a near point in the future he would lie with this one, would release his mass into him. An intimacy he couldn't bear thinking of, when all other intimacies had ended so badly.

"Who made you?" he said, bluntly, amazed that he didn't fudge his words.

"I don't quite know," said Maximo. Prime did not miss the gladiator's sideways look at Guar, and the Senator's almost imperceptible nod of encouragement.

"This is what makes our Prime unique from the others," Guar said. "He does not over-emphasize birth-status." Guar's long fingers brushed Prime's forearm. "There are rumours, dear Lord, that Maximo may have been budded of a God Soldier. Others have remarked on his size, his morphology."

"Why don't you come over to this alcove and we will talk more," said Maximo, confident again.

A hand around Prime's waist, possessive. Behind sheer-curtained alcoves, braziers burnt energon. Mechs dawdled with slaves and servants. Prime could smell sex. The ozone of exposed bodymass.

"Wait..."

Prime found himself scanning the crowd for Starscream. The bond between them was weak - Starscream's newness and their single moment of spark-intimacy had not consolidated their frequencies. He sensed an odd relief, as if he spoke to someone important.

_Please kill me. I cannot bear to live this life._

And then, a spark-jump of _danger_ and he pushed Maximo down to the floor, followed him there as the air exploded in fire and spitting shrapnel. The Vos Palace crumbled upon them all like so much broken paper...

Prowl was there when the rescue operations dug them out.

"Looks like the All-Spark is with you, Prime."

When the building collapsed he had braced himself, activated the inertia-fields across his exoskeleton. He had known that if he could catch the first moments of shrapnel on his hardened frame, he could shore up a pocket of space and survive.

The first collapse was heavy. His joints buckled. The rest of the building's weight was taken up by it's own structure. Gasping from the effort, Prime had put himself into stasis, and slept.

He woke to Prowl's hands feeling his chest for damage, and behind him, dour-faced Talix, his golden optics reflecting the subspace layers of Matrix existence.

"No damage," said Prowl.

"The Matrix is still alive," said Talix.

"You could have asked me." Prime muttered, but this was an old argument that would not be won. "What happened here?"

"Deceptions," Prowl answered. He reached out a hand, helped Prime upright. His knee trembled, would not hold his weight.

"I thought we had dealt with them."

Prowl nodded. "Just rogue Empties on a suicide run. The last of the garbage cleaning itself out. They weren't terribly successful."

Prime looked around at the ruin. He saw the sun-dazzled mechs picking themselves out of the rubble. Maximo was being attended to by a dozen servants as he represented a significant asset to several investors. He slapped them impatiently.

A sizable shockwave had knocked down the Vos Palace, weakened as it was from war upon war, but to destroy mech-bodies took heat, and great deal of it. The kamikaze-mech's ordinance must have been old, cribbed from multiple and unreliable sources. Despite his anger, he was moved by their desperation. So little was left to them, the only thing they had left to give was their lives.

"Starscream?"

Prowl didn't quite hide the flicker of annoyance. "He's been taken back to the Temple. It was too much of a coincidence that he was in the servants' quarters moments before our would-be Decepticons came out."

* * *

They'd given him something strong, a circuit-blocker. Something that doped up his cyber-transmitters, cut the communication lines between his metal skeleton and the infraspace flesh. He relived over and over again the shockwave's blow. Just like the time he'd transformed too early, once, in the first days of learning how to fly. Instead of landing on a rooftop, he'd slammed into a wall.

Just like when he'd woken up after the bonding night with Prime.

They took care to tie his wrists this time, place him in the steel prison. In a way it was a relief. It meant his exit time was near. He did not believe in the All-Spark, but believed enough in the multiversal eternities of his massflesh that dying only filled him with a poignant joy.

From his crouch he saw three pairs of feet. He ignored them. Guards came and went. He was checked often, these three were no different.

A muttered command, and two pairs of feet left. The nanites were a startling blue, like the highest point of an Earth-arid sky. A brace at the knee, the smeared silver of a recent repair.

"Starscream."

That voice. Starscream rose to his full height, met Prime's optics. They were more intense than when he remembered them last, pain etched.

"I take it their campaign wasn't a success," said Starscream. "You're still alive."

"You would have felt it over the bond, if I had gone."

Starscream tilted his face up to a sliver of grating in the high corner of his prison. Sunlight bled through, dirty and old. If he had only flown, just once...

"I didn't try."

Prime stepped forward.

"Was it really so bad, being with me?"

Starscream kept his face towards the sunlight, aware that the tiny bead touched his forehead, crept over his eyes. For a moment he was blind, and blindness brought the memories back.

"You made me forget myself."

Lower than a whisper, Prime spoke a word, and the stasis belt fell from him. It fell to the floor, shivered like a living thing. Starscream looked up, startled.

"They blame you for the attack."

Prime spoke in English. The guards nearby would not know what they spoke of.

"I tried to tell them you had nothing to do with it, but one of the potentates died. They need a scapegoat."

Starscream was at a loss for words. Then, "Am I supposed to walk out?"

"Stay here. In a few hours I have an audience with the Senators. The guards will be busy. I'll send Jazz. With him you will be able to leave without too much trouble. Besides, I'm sure you can fly now."

The words came out forced and clipped. Prime looked Starscream up and down, then turned on his heel and left the room.

* * *

He wanted to wreck himself, swallowed three vials of liquid energon in a row before throwing the glass into the athanor.

"Slow down Prime," said Jazz, concerned. "Remember what Ratchet said."

"I remember what he said!" Prime spat almost savagely. "Take it easy, he said. Slow down, he said."

Jazz sat back and made a show of watching the fight-forms being performed on the Pavilion floor. How long had it been since a real battle had been fought here? You could think never, if your memory was short. There were no songs sung about their victory. Even the plasma scars had been filled in, although the artisans were still working on recreating some of the mural damage.

Some of the survivors from the Vos attack were eagerly celebrating their second chances at life with elaborate fight-dances. The songs were rowdy and joyful, the kind of songs sung at the end of the world.

"This isn't the time to be maudlin, Prime," said Jazz uncertainly. "You're alive. These people are celebrating that."

"I've condemned Starscream to death."

"You did the right thing."

Prime gorged another glass of energon, and slammed it onto the table so hard that it broke. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, sneering. "They celebrate the rusted Matrix being alive."

Liege Maximo playfully cuffed a fellow gladiator. He strutted about, owning the floor, undefeated champion, about to bed a Prime.

A touch unsteady, Prime pushed back his chair, strode onto the Pavilion floor towards Liege Maximo, grabbed his arm.

"Prime?" The gladiatormech was aware of Prime's chaos, was careful. "I never got the chance to thank you. For saving my life."

"You want me?" Tighter grip. "All this planning between yourself and Guar, you want me to violate you in that way?"

"Yes. Lord Prime." The gladiator's face was bright with success. The exact same expression he wore in the fighting pits. Prime wanted to hit him.

Maximo leaned in to kiss him, but Prime turned his head, growled in his audios. "I want bodysex. Mass-sharing. That's all."

The crowd swirled around him. "I will not disappoint you Lord."

Closer now. By Primus, he was aroused. His voice was thick with a bitter lust, but not for this mech. Memory of his berth back on the Ark, memory of he washracks, the satellite dish. Memory of Starscream's Decepticon curses upon overload.

"I will not call your name. When I use another's name, you will continue to service me."

If Maximo was disappointed, he hid it well. "Anything for you."

"Meet me in my berth chambers. My servants will show you there."

Maximo nodded. Now he sensed it properly. Prime was going to use him, hard.

Prime stalked back to the table.

"Don't you think it's too soon?"

"Weren't you the one who told me I should find someone?"

"Yes, but..." Jazz looked pained. "One of our people. From the Ark. Who knows what you've been going through. Primus, even I would volunteer if Prowl would loosen up a bit."

Any other time, he might have smiled. But there was no levity in him.

"Go back to Prowl, Jazz. Keep yourself out of this."

There was still business to be done. Prime had to wait, knowing that there was a mech waiting on the star-Sapphire Berth. The energon was sour in his reservoir. His gears churned. The Matrix sat like a stone in his chest, dead. The voices were too loud.

Eventually he found the time to sidle away, to walk the empty corridors of the Temple. All those long years he had been away, and the Temple never changed, even as the planet decayed around it. Having Maximo would be the last step on the slide. Once he'd had him, he would fall into depravity and darkness, like Nova, like Nemesis, like Vector near the end.

The doors stood tall and imposing. Alpha Prime, whose face made the Autobot symbol held fast to the Book of the Law.

Prime hissed a defeated breath and pushed open the doors.

Something rolled towards him, golden in the gas-jets. Prime looked down and saw Primon's head come to rest at his feet. The optics of the golden statue looked up at him, accusing.

It was such an erroneous sight, all he could do was stare.

He almost didn't want to look up. The rest of Primon's body lay face down like a headless diver about to pierce the skin of water. But he did look up, and there was Maximo, standing just before the berth, painted in all the sacred fractals of coupling. He seemed dejected. Limp even. Two of the jets had fallen over and were scudding flames across the floor.

"Maximo?"

Maximo collapsed, and the mech who had been holding his body up came out swinging. Prime deflected two punches, pushed him back.

Starscream was shining with exertion, the lubricant-sweat coursing off him.

"You should go. You don't want to be here when I finish him off," Starscream growled.

Maximo groaned.

"I thought you were going," said Prime, "I let you go."

"You shamed me! You came here for this whore Senator Guar brought you!"

No use lying to Starscream. He could smell the rut off him, knew Prime too well.

"Were you going to fuck him, Prime?"

"Yes," grated Prime, thwarted desire making him sick and mean.

Starscream struck Prime across the face, Prime shoved Starscream up against Prima's statue, pressed with a knee between his legs so his feet couldn't touch the floor.

"You shame me, being with him!"

"You were my consort in name only!"

"Were? _Were?_ You break my spark and cast me off like I'm nothing? Rust you!"

"You want to stay here?" A shove. "Stay then. I'll make you _watch_."

"All I would have to do is open my legs. You would forget him in an instant."

It was true. Prime had to lie through clenched jaws.

"You underestimate me, Starscream."

"You want this?" It was said in hate maybe, sarcasm. Starscream didn't mean it, but Prime's attention was caught, by his armour opening and Starscream's colour-smell like a violent aura. Prime's body responded instinctively. Static electricity veined his exposed mass.

"You think you can seduce me like all your other victims?" hissed Prime even as he let his battlemask fall. "Do you think that's all I want you for, this?" A thumb dragged rough over Starscream's lips, and Starscream's tongue caught it as it passed. Prime palmed Starscream's jaw. "You wanted me, once. I could taste in you when you overloaded, you screamed my name like a harlot."

"Rust you!" Star tried to pull away and they wrestled, falling onto the Sapphire Berth, Starscream cursing and gasping, excitement making Prime spill silver across his thighs and the stone. Prime's hand pressed up between the folds of armour and the tactile density of magnetic flux between Starscream's legs, stroking liquid delight from a body he knew so well.

"Try not to overload, Star. Just try."

With a shouted curse Starscream pushed away before glaring at Prime, his breath streaming out of him. Then Starscream rolled over, presented his aft, a hand slipping between his thighs, fingers holding apart the delicate pleats of armour and Prime almost climaxed at the sight of open protoflesh alone. He knew it was a test of his fealty and willpower and did not care, was rough, grabbed Starscream's hips, hesitated only because he couldn't decide whether to taste him or fuck him, wanted to do both, thumbed open the armour-pleats wider so that Starscream yelped but did not struggle, only arched his back, giving Prime access.

No nuzzles on songs to ready him, no gentle easing of weight into the infraspaces of his body, Prime breached him with an intent that made Starscream cry out, hilted his mass inside his enemy-lover, and fucked Starscream with the very presence of him. Prime's exoskeleton warped and flexed off his metaskeleton with each lunge, he pulled Star's legs apart so he could go deeper. He attacked Starscream like their Beast Ancestors. Wanted to do things to Starscream, damned and obscene. Demanded intimacies that were more than a lover should give. And Starscream only shouted, "Yes, rust you, yes..."

His own overload threatened, the culmination that he'd needed for so long, cried "I've wanted...wanted..." and could not fully verbalize this enormous feeling, only wept and shouted incoherently each time he flowered into Starscream's body. Starscream's protoflesh transmuted to silver liquid, easing out the awkward thrusts to smooth entry, making the timbre of Starscream's cries lengthen from pained grunts to long moans, even as he cursed Prime's name, his birth, his people.

And then the wave broke, his overload smashed through him, he spent into Star and was assaulted by the matrix-memory of the planet-eater and his wounded victim, his Primus-memory, his Unicron memory, oldest and deepest of them..

_Like fucking Primus himself._

Primus beneath him, wounded and exhausted.

Prime was too aroused, there was no refractory period, no cool-down. Sobbing with delight Prime continued to ease his mass into Starscream, gentle now, he wanted Starscream to feel what he felt, he wanted it so badly it was almost an emotional imperative greater than his own climax.

Starscream's body became rigid, feet flexing, trying to stave off overload, the ripe lubricant making his laterals shine. Prime pressed Star's waist with his hands, revenge and reverence, felt Starscream respond, the changes in the density of his body, he shivered and released, his thighs runnelled with quicksilver crimson...

But a darker shade of colour than normal and Prime pulled away, was suddenly struck by a memory: _mistaking massblood for spill_...

When he turned Starscream's unresisting body over, his dark face had lost its sheen, the lips gone grey...

"He was so strong..." whispered Starscream, before the optics winked out.

* * *

It was going to be a hard thing to explain, thought Ratchet, what with Prime screaming as if it was his head lopped off rather than Primon's, Starscream unconscious across the sacred berth, the silver splashes and intermingled massblood that suggested that some unspeakable sexual travesty had gone on...definitely hard to explain.

The blind mechs of the Sacred Chambers had dealt with such things before. They had gone to Jazz first. Their business was to be discreet - they knew that what they had heard in the chambers from their spy-windows were not things that were needed to be known. They were political artists. Prowl might have been Prime's Second, but Jazz was his confidant.

Despite Prime's frosty relationship with Ratchet, he was the only mech Jazz would trust with such a possible scandal. Ratchet was not at all happy about being called from his clinic in the Underhalls, where he now spent his days tending to the repairs of the servants and slaves. He halfway expected Prime to have snapped and killed Starscream. Expected it. Thought it confirmed when he saw Starscream lying across the star-sapphire, mass-spill staining his pelvic armour.

"Primus, Optimus, what have you done? Good grief, get some light in here!"

"Is he all right?" shouted Optimus, "_Is he all right._"

Jazz went to hush him, keep him away so that Ratchet could do his work.

Only when the photon sources came in and Ratchet pushed nanites into his optics could he see the signatures of damage. Who had done this? Starscream had been damaged, and how badly was yet to be determined.

"You do this, Prime?" asked Ratchet, accusing.

"I did not...oh Primus's blood Ratchet, I don't know. He was fine when we started."

"_Started_?"

"He wanted me. It had been so long since he...since anyone wanted...I couldn't say no." He sounded so dreadfully young when he spoke. Ratchet couldn't condemn him.

Seeing a battered Liege Maximo made things worse. The gladiatormech had obviously been in a knock-down, savage fight, and had lost. There was a hoard of energon riding on his being unbeatable...and someone had defeated him. Ratchet had him dispatched to a back-alley medic on the outskirts of Iacon, someone who would keep quiet, forge an accident or fall. At least he wasn't dead.

"Back on the inside, now?" asked Jazz, after Ratchet stabilized Starscream and put him into stasis.

"More like the only one he can trust," said Ratchet. He watched Prime sitting dejectedly next to Starscream, little more than a shadow in the dim blue stasis-ward.

* * *

After a cycle Prime left him to join Ratchet and Jazz. Exhaustion weighed him down. He ate an energon gel gratefully.

"He seems better. His breathing's levelled out."

"He's a strong mech, your sparkmate," said Jazz quietly.

"Jazz," Ratchet murmured. "Just...keep it."

"Well, he is! He's been through too much, Optimus, things that would destroy any lesser mech. I can't think of anyone else who is more deserving of the title of Prime Consort." Gave Ratchet a challenging stare. "I don't care what any of the Senators or Councillors say."

Ratchet was mortified, but Prime put a hand on Jazz's shoulder. "Let's just discuss how he's doing right now. Ratchet?"

"Okay," said Ratchet in defeat, "You'd have more than a few mechs wanting to see that fight. But he bruised himself pretty badly under his armour."

"I never saw any marks on him. He seemed fine." Prime shook his head.

"It's a signature move by Maximo to extend the bout. He's a show-mech, can't have the opponent going down too quickly. So he hurts them in ways they can't feel, or retaliate with quickly."

"One Inch Punch," said Jazz, nodding. "They have the same thing on Earth, too."

Ratchet turned off a diagnostic device that had started to beep loudly. "It effectively overrides any inertial dampening - the way our armour hardens when we take a projectile hit. A contusion forms under the plates. The aneurysm bust after you two started - ash..."

Prime covered his face with his hands. His fault, as always.

"But in a real battle...let's just say I've treated Starscream's victims. Maximo would have had to fight for his life. If you hadn't turned up when you did, Prime, Starscream would have killed him."

"I know."

"It's no life for him here, Prime." Ratchet tried to be gentle. "Even if you became lovers again. Even if he gave in. After Maximo, who else will he have to fight for your attention?"

"Nobody..."

"Nobody? Not even when the Senators keep throwing mechs at you to try and garner favour? Humiliating him each time? A Decepticon is proud. You need to let him go, Optimus."

"I told him he could go."

"Releasing him is more than just taking a belt off. Dissolve the bond. Release him back into the wild and deal with the Decepticon fallout later. Or else I can stop feeding him energon now. He'll slip away, peacefully."

Prime's back tensed. He fought the urge to yell. His world had collapsed around him. He wanted to kiss Starscream's damaged face, troubled even in stasis. He had not left Starscream's side, could still smell his protoflesh on his hands.

Ratchet put his arms around him. "Orion, let him go." Whispered words. _Orion_. Perhaps he never meant to say that name. Or perhaps he did, and was speaking to the shadowy other, the mech of his body.

"Ratchet, it hurts." He held tight, and for the first in a long, long time he was newmade again, holding on to the one mech who treated him with any kindness, even when he hated Prime for killing the one who owned his body first. _It burns me, Ratch, take it out._

Ratchet remembered. Held him tighter. "Just give it time. The feeling will pass."

"He asked you to be with him," said Prime. "On the first morning. I heard it over the bond."

"Yes."

"I understand why he did. I feel stronger when you're around, somehow."

Ratchet patted Prime on the back. "You're not the first to say that."

Prime pulled away.

"When this is done," said Ratchet, "leave this place. This planet. Earth is our home now. Let Elita be custodian until the lights of Iacon fade and we can see out our lives in peace."

Prime nodded. A choking relief filled him. He had just given up Cybertron as well as Starscream. The Senators would rise up in fury and desperation, but there was little that could be done. Their apocalypse would not be a conflagration, but like the Earth legends of the end-times, the freezing over into ice and nothingness.

* * *

The eclipse night was the first one since the Temple Battle. The moons shone bright from the reflected, hidden sun. The temperature plummeted. Frost formed on flat surfaces.

The golden minarets and towers, the sky roads and boulevards, all seemed constructed out of ice-threads, delicate as a breath.

A servant came with word. Starscream was about to leave, but had requested an audience with Prime and was waiting in Prime's quarters.

Strung-out with apprehension, Prime returned to his rooms.

There were no lights in the sun-room, so the flat expanse of obsidian floor and crystal windows were illuminated by moonlight alone. He couldn't quite make out Starscream's silhouette against one of the windows until he moved and the black glass reflected the pale surfaces of his body.

"The city is so empty," Starscream said.

"Yes. Most mechs choose the eclipse night to recharge."

"You wouldn't need to recharge so often here, when the energy falls from the sky."

"Solar energy doesn't match energon ore."

Starscream turned his head. His optics lit up the leading edge of his wing in one long, violet streak.

"Ratchet says my wings are of a size now. I'll be flying out of here."

When Prime didn't speak, Starscream said. "Are you going to stop me now?"

"No. What's done is done. You can go." Cold words hammered out. Lies.

"Tonight. Before the eclipse is over."

So. It was confirmed. The last time he saw Starscream fly was back on the sentinel-ledge, flying away from him. And now here it was again, like a recurring dream that he could not change, not with all the power in the universe.

"It was good for us once, wasn't it? For a while it wasn't so bad."

A huff of impatience. "Prime, you were the best I ever had. All right? The best. You touch me and I lose myself. I forget what it is to be a Decepticon. I become...something I'm not. I don't want to live like that."

"You gave me so much," Prime murmured, and feared if he said any more his resolve would slip and he would beg Starscream to stay. He'd offer him Cybertron and all its moons, and that was no poetic promise. Those things were his to give.

"Stop." Starscream turned back to the window. "Stop making it difficult."

Prime spoke on, like an engine broken for so long it couldn't slow down, only grind itself to dust. "You gave me so much...things I'd never known in all my life. You showed me what I couldn't have and took it away, and you never told me why."

"Prime, can't you understand. We were never going to be. There was just too much in the way."

"I loved you. I wasn't some lust-crazy mech."

"You loved a slave," Starscream interrupted, "a broken thing hauled in from the desert, who was weak. Not a Deception Leader."

There was no stopping what he had to say. They had never spoken like this, the division of language and culture like a wall between them, "I never told you why I never thought about sparkbonding, back in the Ark, back when you used to love me."

Starscream's head turned again, warrior's face in profile, still achingly beautiful. But the foreign optics were severe.

"I didn't want it for you," said Prime. "Because no Prime bonding was ever made in joy. Not like Jazz and Prowl. Not like any Autobot. Always hate, and rape, and coercion." He pressed his fist to his chest. "What we had was too fragile. It was never going to be strong enough to resist this."

"Foolish Autobot," Starscream said under his breath. "Your sentimentalities are what destroy you."

His words cut Prime to the spark. He had shored up so many defences against Starscream that he couldn't feel any more.

"Forget I said anything. Go. Fly away back to your people."

"I have none left. And there won't be Autobots left, soon."

"You blame me for this? Is this what it's all about?"

"I blame the Matrix, for one thing." Starscream screwed up his face. "It's as if you've ruined yourselves trying to accommodate something which doesn't exist."

"Oh, it exists."

"As what? A dead relic in your chest? The god the Autobots pray to and make decisions that condemn us all?"

"It's real."

"Parasite."

"Yes, that too." Prime instinctively put a hand to his chest-plates, spoke in a hoarse whisper so strangled he almost sounded like a Decepticon. "They used to make me show it. When I was reanimated. They would put hooks in it, metal forks, pull it out of me. In front of others."

Starscream stayed impassive, but Prime could see the emotion beneath the surface of his metalskin.

"One I tried to touch it, after my spark was breached. The first time. I was punished. Twenty lashes." Cold anger made his joints ache. "I was beaten so badly Ratchet thought I might not live. They all hoped I would die. Even Ratchet, though he won't admit it. After that-" he felt his own resolve, an acid hate for the Temple administration, the Thaumaturge, the Matrix itself. "After that I knew who my enemy was."

Spoken like a traitor's confession.

"This thing...tore off Megatron's hand?"

Prime nodded. "It destroys everything it touches. Sometimes even me."

A weighty moment, and Starscream seemed to make a decision. "Show me."

"No."

"Straxus Prime, this rusted relic of yours has been the affliction of my race and the bane of my life with you. I deserve to see it!"

"You _deserve_ this? You want to look at it?" Quick anger at Starscream's entitlement, even now. "When you would never let me touch your spark?"

"My spark isn't killing this planet! My spark didn't kill my brothers!"

"Look at it then, and rust you." He hauled open his chest-plate and horror upon horror, allowed the Matrix to flower from under its depression, alien and revolting. "Look at it then."

Starscream was silent. Prime was drowning in memories, the forks in his chest, Talix having to pull all his strength into tearing the Matrix free, and afterwards Prime would bleed gold, would not even be allowed to pat a little comfort back into himself, just lie in exhaustion, paired with this cancerous, parasitic agony.

"I hate it," Prime whispered savagely. "If only it were dead."

Starscream reached out a hand, and Prime withdrew. "It bites."

"I'm not going to take it. I only want to touch it."

Touch it, when Starscream wouldn't touch him.

"You want to touch it? Why don't you put your mouth on it?" Prime hissed, vicious with resentment.

He didn't mean it in seriousness. He only wanted to say something perverted, the most obscene thing he could think of. Wanted to see shock on Starscream's face, disgust even.

But Starscream stared back in challenge and detestation, before grabbing one thick pistil and running his mouth up the entire length.

A bolt of alien sensation jagged through Prime. Organo-data, burning through his circuits.

Prime shouted with astonished, agonized joy. He spent into his own armour, dripped silver onto the floor. Staggered back, clinging to his chest-plates. Through sheer strength of will he forced the Matrix back into the spark cavity, where it shook and railed like a thing imprisoned.

A small noise at the doorway, and for a terrible moment Prime thought that someone had seen them. But it was only Perceptor, juggling pilfered keys.

"It's time," he started, then looked between Prime and Starscream, the heightened communication between them, the stink of sexual arousal. "Uh, I'll come back later."

He stepped back into the conduit, and an awful feeling rose in Prime, that he'd been given a glimpse of something profound and wonderful and it was going to be taken from him the same way everything was taken from him.

"Prime..." Starscream began. "If I don't go now I might not..."

Prime turned on Starscream in rent despair, "Go! You wanted to leave! Then leave, rust you!"

Starscream stared at Prime, inscrutable as the God Soldiers on the walls before turning and walking away. The Matrix pushed open Prime's armour, yearning in blind senselessness for the thing that had touched him so. Prime fell to his knees, tried to push the Matrix back into his chest in a panic, all the fears of his life exhuming and tormenting him _if they see, if they see me touch it I'll be beaten,_ and the Matrix fought him like an animal thing, turning in and stabbing itself so that he felt it and screamed in agony.

Until finally, when it gave in and retreated in an ooze of acid and poison, he had no strength to push his armour shut. Lay in his own mess, dying and reliving his own memories and fell into an exhausted recharge.

When he woke, cycles later, the eclipse was in its wane.

A sickly light touched him. Worse than a night with too much energon. He struggled to his feet, brushed the glitter from his thighs. Scratch marks laced the inside of his exoskeleton. The Matrix sulked in its depression.

From the windows Prime could just see the launch platform, a remnant of the old architecture of Iacon. Plinth or Autophage nest - who could know in this rogue and reduced age? Even their libraries had burned. Four mechs stood on the platform, and one was winged. Prime pressed himself to the quartz pane and watched as the winged shadow stood on the furthest edge, watched as he nodded to the others, and fell, and fell.

"Oh no," said Prime to the glass. "No."

But Starscream had always a taste for the theatrical, and the plinth was illuminated by fire, and an alt-mode plane - etched in all the stark Decepticon lines of his race - escaped the grip of gravity, and was gone.

The others departed, taking their time. They had let a wild thing free at last - they couldn't help but be changed themselves.

So Prime was alone when he came to the launch site, alone when he fell to his knees in grief and prostrated himself before the iconography of his loss, for Starscream was gone from him, gone of his own choice, and he was left to press his mouth to the burn-scar on the pale metal, powerless, and Lord of Nothing, even his own Matrix-crushed spark.

* * *

TBC


	33. Deus Ex Machina 'Part One'

Thirty-three: Deus Ex Machina (Part One)

* * *

When he turned his face, he was not alone.

A turbo-fox had appeared on the balcony, long and serpentine, thirty-six legs, a pincer-tail that could tear a hole through armour, mouthparts dribbling acid. Prime froze, still flat on his belly, face-plate retracted, mouth pressed to the burn-scar.

Face to face, it looked at him with glittering black optics, little bringer of death. They were native to darkness and the Pit, not this sunlit world. Fear morphed avoidance-programming into aggression.

"You're a way from home," murmured Prime.

The monster glared back, mouth parts working up an acid spit.

Time slowed. He waited to receive blinding pain. Hunters had most likely driven the turbo-fox from a game reserve on the edge of the Tower District, the Alpha enclave. He'd once heard of a high-ranking mech who had reared a fox from inception, would display it as a pet, slung over shoulder and arms, a badge of mechismo. One day this pet had turned on its owner, bit him until he died. By the time he was found stuffed in a waste-conduit, his protoflesh had been host to fox-larvae, his empty armour decorated by the tin-foil crinkle of pupae shells. A terrible way to end, but a caution regarding wild things.

Prime could taste its hatred. The broken shaft of a hunter's barb poked out of one segment. A leg dragged. He even thought about leaning forward and removing the barb. It would be so easy to do. But a turbo-fox was what it was, and could not be tamed, would not construct Prime's action as kindness and necessity. So they regarded each other as enemies, before the creature lost interest and turned away, piston-legs chattering on the flat surface of the plinth, and then into shadow.

Prime rose to his feet. It was time to return.

* * *

He went to see Prion, needing answers. He did not know if he could tell the priest about Starscream touching the Matrix, the way it had come alive in his chest, the pleasure it had brought him. For all he knew he would be beaten, just like he had as a spark-child.

Such a thing would have to be asked indirectly.

Avoiding a murder of Councillors, Prime found Prion at the Council Altar, preparing for a short ceremony to welcome a new Senator. Prion always liked to arrive before the other Thaumaturgie and make certain everything was in order.

He was polishing a small icon of Prima when Prime stepped through the curtained entrance.

"I remember her," said Prion with a sad smile. "She was magnificent. Almost your size, which for a Basic is almost unheard of."

Prion put the statue aside.

"She _was_ budded from Primon. She could be nothing else but exceptional," said Prime.

"Yes. Not gold like this, no. Translucent armour, as if she'd grown from an opal. You could see the Matrix and spark in her chest cavity, see both move according to her moods."

"How did she interact with the Matrix, Prion?"

"What do you mean?

"Did she speak with it? Did she touch it?"

Prion gave Prime a sideways look, and Prime feared that he'd said too much.

"That is a secret between the Prime and the Ur-Thaumaturge," said Prion flatly. "You could always ask Talix."

"I'll pass," said Prime, disappointed.

"Such a shame that Arcane has gone mad."

"I'll pass on him, too."

The old Thaumaturge busied himself around the Throne of Primus, snapping sparks from his fingers over each brazier until their chemical contents caught alight. The murals rippled along with the light. Light etches became deep shadows.

Prime did not reply, and Prion continued.

"Yes, Prima was well built. Strong. But Alpha Duex was stronger than Prima, back then. The Warlord rose from among deep Autobot ranks, a spark-child of Alpha Trion and his forbidden congress with Vector Sigma. He had such a way about him. He inspired chaos and suffering. He constructed this palace around the old Temple just to prove that he could. The Decepticons were born under his rule. Megatron would have quailed before him. Our planet succumbed to madness. We gave up our language for him, made the circuit patterns on the walls gibberish. Even I, for a time."

Sadness in his voice, even after so many solar cycles had passed, and so many had died, and so many generations of Primes had come and gone.

"Perhaps you should teach me of the No-Spark," Prime murmured darkly. "I should know of this place."

"Indeed." Prion then began to lay out the altar. Upon the platinum cloth were laid the steel forks. They had been dipped in gold, but were instruments of torture nonetheless.

"It was these particular God Soldiers who finally brought him in. Perihelion, Ascension, Paraselene. Offered him up to Prima as spoil and sacrifice. We thought that she would kill Duex and make an example of him. But she did not."

This room brought back bad memories for Prime. He did not enjoy being here.

"Do you want to know what he looked like?" A sideways glance. An odd cadence to Prion's voice. "Alpha Duex?"

"There are no murals of him anywhere."

"There are some. Here. In this room."

Prime did not answer him. But his gaze followed the old Thaumaturge as his fingers touched the wall. "The God Soldiers."

Three of them. Starscream's face. Two were stoic and one, perhaps an oversight of the artist, face blurred and absent, as if his thoughts had wondered elsewhere. Prime knew the picture well. So many times he had stood here in shame and forced his attention to the wall while his most intimate self was bared.

Prion moved his finger on. "Xaaron. He was young and beautiful. He was promised consort to Prima - but on their bonding day Alpha Duex's armies came."

Prime could imagine them storming the early halls of the High Council, a conflagration of mechbodies moving as one, all at the command of a powerful leader. Cybertron was a planet torn then. They had lost their Prime. How could some budded Basic ever equal the glory of Primon?

More than any other forebear Optimus had felt a kinship with Prima. It was she who'd had to prove herself a Prime, as he did. The other Primes were incepted into their rank. They never had to prove anything.

"The young Empress Prime was moved elsewhere for many, many years. Whatever bond she'd had with Xaaron was lost. When she rose from hiding she was like you, Prime, no longer ready to surrender to the will of the Elders." Broken smile. "But they were not Elders back then."

At last he came to a black slab of obsidian in the wall. Gilgamech circuits adorned the surface, a prayer to Primus in the form of a Mandala, repeating structures that gave the illusion of depth.

"Are you ready to see him?"

Prime nodded. There were greater things at work beyond a history lesson. He could still taste the last chemical shreds of Starscream's departure. The Matrix moved in him like a living wound. He was ready to receive knowledge.

Prion was old, but he'd scavenged parts well. His arms unlocked to a span twice as wide as they needed to be. He lifted the massive stone canvas, placed it aside.

Aeons had coated the hidden wall in a fur of metal shavings. They shivered and fell as Prion wiped his hand across the surface. Prima was as familiar to him as any of the other Primes. Her god-face was calm and perhaps just a tiny bit cruel. This was not the new-budded Empress, but the Oracle Prime, the Prime who had grown to echo her enemy in abominations in order to defeat him.

With the sleeve of his cloak Prion moved the rest of the dust away, and Prime looked at the face of Alpha Duex, and a sick, lurching disappointment fell over him.

Alpha Duex, the fabled warlord of Cybertron, looked exactly like Optimus Prime.

"This is not possible." Prime heard his own strangled whisper as if a stranger spoke. "My body is not of the Prime lineage. It is from the Pit."

"Of course. So it is." Prion bowed. "But I have shown you this. So you may know that you are also as important as any Alpha."

A switch had been thrown. Before he had always _felt_ the great warlord within him, but only as Matrix-memory and borrowed spark.

A shirring of displaced air reached him, soft murmurs of High Autobot tongue.

"They say Prima tortured him for a thousand years," said Prion. "But they also say she fell in love with him, in the end." He replaced the obsidian slab. "Perhaps that was Alpha Duex's greatest victory."

"I fell in love with my enemy," Prime said.

"Yes, and now he is gone."

The murmuring became louder.

"If I stay here," said Prime, "I will lose my mind. I will become what I was when I was incepted, a throttled slave to your religion."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

Prion touched each of the golden forks with reverence. "I thought these were important. That without them the Matrix did not exist. Until I saw this."

He reached under his cloak and opened up the package he had concealed there. Megatron's hand, torn from the root.

"When Alpha Duex's people first came to the Temple, his Second In Command tried to force a spark-interrogation from the young Prime. His spark was crushed out of him. You understand. Crushed. Because the Matrix makes those decisions. You asked me how she interacted with the Matrix. I say she _was_ the Matrix."

The old Thaumaturge smiled at Prime's puzzled face. "See the Oracle before you go."

* * *

She knew what he was going to say when he came to see her, even before he spoke.

Elita's chamber shone in the gas-jets. The condensation-wet walls shimmered and fluxed. The interior itself was unremarkable, a low, ribbed space built to bivouac a thousand 'bots of average size.

She shooed out Chromia and a dozen other 'bots, including one who winked an optic knowingly at Prime.

Then Elita turned on him, almost savage.

"So you go then? Leave us to our fate? Leave the planet to die?"

Prime felt exposed, even in this odd, chiascuro light.

Elita went on, "Did you cement the bond with Starscream? Or was that travesty of a bonding ceremony the only time you pressed your spark to his?"

She approached Prime, mantis arm held as if ready to strike, but did not. Hugged him with her anthro hand, said, "I am so old, Optimus. I remember when this place was filled with light. Primon sat over there, and the Matrix of Leadership spoke through him. We needed no translators then."

"Elita - you could come back to Earth with us. Leave this place to the priests."

She pulled away, her optics searching out his. Touched his face. "When I gave up Vector Prime I swore I would never love another Prime that way again." Her hand fell away. "I have not broken that promise. I could have come close with you."

"But you didn't. Not really. Not even when I needed it."

"There were moments."

"I needed more than moments, Elita."

Her hand brushed his chest and he had such an image of Starscream there, his mouth on the long tendril of the Matrix, optics flashing hate.

"You could have had those moments from Starscream. You had him, and you didn't try to win him over. You took him by force. You bent to the will of Cybertron."

"Elita, the circumstances..."

"You won his affection before. When he had come to you as a prisoner. What changed? Did you stop loving him?"

The quick flash of indignant anger was such a shock, after all the numb and senseless days, "He was taken from me!" Prime hissed. He pressed his fist to his chest, and the Matrix moved in restless pulse. "I loved him and he was taken from me. And when he returned..." Prime felt the passion leave him. The last words were a murmur. "He was someone else."

"Someone else? Or his true self?"

"You don't understand," he said, defeated, "Our time on Earth wasn't real."

"You have condemned us," she repeated.

"Which is why I need to go."

Elita nodded, but would not look at him. "Go," she said, almost viciously. "Go and take the Matrix with you. See if I care. See if any of us care."

He stood in the centre of that great, echoing space, at a loss.

"Look after Cybertron."

"Look after yourself."

He left her, and headed out towards the Space Bridge. His dying world was lost to him. The resonance of Cybertron's atmosphere, the noble gasses moving though the conduits and empty spaces of the god-planet were like a last, desperate and useless breath.

* * *

TBC


	34. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Two'

Thirty-four: Deus Ex Machina (Part Two)

* * *

No one was there to greet him as he stepped through the bridge, no retinue of priests, no Councillors or politicians, just himself and the high desert.

The bridge array had been built onto the flat spread of an ancient riverbed, the fine alluvial soil baked into brittle shale. The dry heat parched the last of the condensation from his armour, and he looked up into an infinitely blue sky with a feeling of sparking relief, as if a terrible weight had - if not fallen from him - shifted itself so that it was easier to bear. So alien, and yet it felt so much like home.

For a moment he debated on skirting the Ark and making his way north, deep into the permafrosts beyond the Arctic Circle. Maybe bury himself in ice, the way Skyfire had chosen a moon in a lost corner of the Galaxy to live.. He imagined himself found a million years into the future, his spark finally extinguished, his body a curiosity for a species to come.

But a rattle of rocks sliding down a nearby scree put his thoughts aside.

"Who's there?"

A mech stepped out from behind a boulder, desert dust not quite obscuring the green of his armour. Hound squinted at Prime, a startled expression on his flat beast-caste features.

"Prime! I'm sorry...I sensed an unauthorised use of the space bridge, but since it's you..."

"You still have patrols out to the bridge?"

Hound gave a rueful shrug. "Prowl says we shouldn't slack off. Even though the war is over. Even though the Decepticons are gone."

So even their declining days they were still carrying out the same rituals. Hound tipped over a rock with is foot, a curiously human gesture. A furious nest of lizards escaped the sudden sunlight.

"I heard you were bonded."

He was too numb to lie, to play it down for what it was, a forced political union. "Yes."

"_He_ is not here?" Blurted quickly, so it could be retracted, perhaps, for its impropriety.

"It's over. I've come back."

"Oh."

Without warning Hound's features hardened. "You would have lost him anyway, Prime. Even if he loved you."

Hound slid the rest of the way down the slope, transformed, and drove at top speed along the old river course, internal-comms giving a blunt invitation for Prime to follow.

* * *

The Ark was oddly empty when they arrived. The halls echoed with electromagnetic ghosts. Ironhide met them in the central spine of the ship, alerted by the intrusion sensors. His cragged, weathered face was stoic. Prime's arrival did not bode well. If Prime was here then Cybertron was at an end.

Hound bowed out, and now Prime walked the vacant corridor with his old lieutenant, feeling like a past wartime comrade who had worn out his welcome but was being tolerated anyway.

"Most of us have been assigned to other countries. It's the least we can do to prove we mean well to all the humans."

"That's a good plan."

Ironhide made a rattling sound in his vocaliser that could have been the taciturn mech's attempt at a sigh.

"You've returned permanently?"

"Yes."

"And Cybertron?"

"The Council can administer the planet itself. I was only a figurehead anyway. I've no need to impose my will on the place _in absentia_."

Ironhide stopped walking, peered at Prime. "Then it is true. The Prime has left, and Cybertron dies."

"Cybertron was dying even before my incept date," Prime replied, sharper than he needed to. "Now, assemble the troops Ironhide, it's been a long time between inspections."

#

The rest of his lieutenants returned to the Ark several weeks later, exhausted, worn down by upheaval and a planet gone to ruins.

On that day Prime had returned from an inter-country journey that turned sour when he refused to divulge weapons technology to his human hosts. There had been low comments of _getting latent hostility from all you machines,_ which only added to Prime's depression.

They were all feeling low. "There's not much time left for Cybertron," said Perceptor wearily.

Jazz nodded in agreement. "There were energon-supply riots when we left, even in the Iacon banlieue. The shadow-side refugees have crossed the twilight zones, but there's no infrastructure to support them there." His words were flat and factual, but his optics dimmed with what he'd seen. "We were one of the last to get out before the High Council closed the borders. We can't even radio them to see what's going on."

They had no time for proper greetings that day, not with two Earth military groups clamouring for an audience. Prowl and Jazz only had time to grip hands before they were stolen away for more diplomacy.

The humans knew little about Cybertronian hierarchy, but they'd worked out early on that Prime was their leader and wished to speak only with him.

But it was Prowl who knew all their concerns, and Jazz who had a succinct knowledge of human customs and language. Prime needed them to work immediately.

All through the discussion Prime sat at the long table of the War Room and watched as the two 'bots threw hungry glances at each other. No doubt Prowl could see the blast-scars on Jazz's armour, wanted to stroke and touch, make certain he was all right. The humans bickered endlessly about old bones.

"Why don't we just nuke their whole country," Cliffjumper grumped from his end of the table, "make the glitch-heads realise what's _really_ important. Living people. Not dead memories."

The red mech was careful to phrase his words in Autobot tongue, but the phonemes were not so different. The human politicians sensed sarcasm and glared at him.

Prowl only twitched. He did not even tell Cliffjumper to douse it. Prime stroked an aching spot above his left optic. His Second would be useless like this.

"We'll take recess for an hour," said Prime. He watched Jazz and Prowl leave together. Too quickly.

Perceptor watched Prime's restless optics, shared a glance with Wheeljack. The other scientist nodded in solemn agreement. He reached over, his fingers brushing Prime's arm.

"We can go to your room," he said. "If you need it."

The offer had been made in friendship, but made in duty as well. Wheeljack sat nearby. Prime was mortified.

Prime commed back, "I couldn't bear it Perceptor. Not now."

But his spark hurt, it hurt. He wanted to drain away his guilt and pain, have someone take the weight of his body in support and affection. Perceptor would do that, and yet it would not be enough. Since Starscream had touched the Matrix, inarticulate hungers had grown within him. He was all longing and no release.

He waited for his Second and his friend to return, and continued the meeting as if nothing had happened, even though he could smell overload on the pair of them. The Matrix stuttered inside his chest, restless and aching.

Later, he spoke with Jazz alone in his quarters. Nowhere else was secure.

"I'm sorry about before. I hadn't seen Prowl for so long I..."

"Jazz. I understand."

"I felt bad, that you haven't anyone."

"it doesn't matter so much now," he lied. "I'm sure I'll get by."

"It's hard Prime, to get involved with you and not get swept away. _Optimus Prime_ should come with a warning sign attached, you know?"

"Was it that bad, being with me?"

"Being with you was wonderful, Optimus. But it's hard to forget what you are. The status of Prime is burned into Autobot processors." Ruefully, Jazz shook his head and continued. "I disagreed on one thing with Prowl. You needed Starscream in your life. You needed someone to see the manifestation and not the mystery."

"But I ruined him."

"That was the lesson _Starscream_ had to learn. It will make him a better leader, to have been brought so low. He could easily have been filled with pride, become like one of those city-state warlords. He'll know humility. Cybertron will need such a leader now.

Another touch, longer this time, and full of regret, before Jazz bowed out of the room.

Perceptor and Wheeljack were going to bond. They had turned the first gears of the procedure and now the clockwork of cyberemones and administrative traditions were about to fall into place.

Wheeljack was the one to ask Prime permission.

Prime was brusque. "You have it."

"I have some solar energon," said Wheeljack. "I'd very much like it if you shared it with me."

Ratchet's old rooms seemed colder without him. The med-bot had decided to stay on Cybertron. He'd said it was to help out with the reconstruction effort, but Prime knew that a damaged friendship needed time. Besides Wheeljack had enough medical knowledge to work in his place.

They drank down the solar energon in silence. Prime was withdrawn and quiet. Wheeljack kept refilling Prime's cube, head-pieces flashing apologetically.

"I never had the chance to tell you how I felt," he said at last, "about...Perceptor and Starscream. About how we all thought they were together last year."

A rattle of glassware interrupted them. Powerglide shuttled some vacuum flasks onto a shelf and excused himself.

Wheeljack waited until his ungainly new apprentice was gone before he continued.

"I was jealous of Perceptor and Starscream. I thought Starscream was getting in the way. I was scared of his being a Decepticon. I should have sought more proof."

"You weren't to know," said Prime quietly. All this he had guessed a long time ago. It was in a buried past. Old bones.

"But I should have known."

"It's over now. Thank you for the energon, Wheeljack. You may bond." Prime downed the rest in one gulp and pretended not to see Wheeljack frowning.

When he left he was unsteady on his feet. He never let himself get this way - perhaps only in Tesselax's chambers, with the slave...

Groaning, he made his way into his berthchambers. The room spun. He lay on his stomach, as if to receive lashes.

After the military realised that their new visitors would give them nothing of any weapons value, the number of human visitors fell dramatically.

Each morning Jazz would read out a brief of everything that had happened the day before. And every night he listed the duties of the day to come. The days fell into each other like a drunken mech staggering down a lightless conduit.

Prime slipped into the half-life of consciousness that allowed aeons to pass without memory, without the sense of time. He sensed that the others were concerned for him. He met them in automatic friendship, nodded and spoke the words that made them believe that he was back to normal.

His closest friends knew he was not. He heard Jazz whispering to Wheeljack, "I wish Ratchet were here," and falling into embarrassed silence when he walked into the room.

They had exhausted all possibilities when it came to his rehabilitation. He would sparkshare with no-one. And that other act, the terrible one, the degrading habit he'd lost himself to...it was too much for anyone to offer.

Although nothing could be seen past his visor, Prime knew he had. They would have spent hours discussing their problems with Prime.

So when Cliffjumper appeared at his door, his pale, insect-caste face rutched with a terrible decision, Prime was sorry for them all, trying to whore themselves out to him.

But Cliffjumper did not ask to come in. He pressed a finger to his mouth, the universal sign for quiet, motioned for Prime to follow.

They did not head out towards the front of the ship, but to the stern, past the hangar, and the deep sounding-probes of the Ark's original resting place.

Long ago, a tachyon storm had brought them to Earth. Burning with displaced time, the Ark had buried itself in a distant past as if it had been part of the geological strata. Shielded, the occupants had stayed in the relative present. In terms of relative time, barely a few seconds. But the ship had aged around them. The time flux still warped hot in the rear sections. Prime took Cliffjumper's shoulder.

"Friend, we're not going any further until you tell me what we're doing."

He wouldn't have been surprised if Cliffjumper had opened his chest-plates. Sometimes the younger soldiers made their way to the back of the ship for illicit meetings.

He opened his mouth instead. "There was an arrival to the Ark half an hour ago. From Cybertron. He's waiting in the War Room for you."

"Who?"

The red mech hunched up, cornered. "Senator Meridian."

Prime could taste his dislike, like decayed energon mixed with metal shavings. "I have no fear of Meridian."

Cliffjumper's broad face became flatter with anxiety. "Hound received a message from Mirage two days ago. He used a secure Alpha channel. There's been a coup. Emirate Xaaron has been deposed. They have a new leader now."

Prime brought his hand to his chest. They had known this information and not told him? "Who?"

"He waits for you in your War Room." Cliffjumper exhaled. He had become a traitor tonight. "With a retinue of Temple guards."

"Meridian had brought him?"

"Emirate Meridian _is_ him. They're watching Jazz closely, they know you're his closest friend. That's why he sent me."

"To hide in the back of the Ark?"

"To hide, yeah, but not here."

He began to walk again, and before Prime could say another word they turned a corner into a room stinking of displaced time and torn space. Deep in the drive rooms of his own ship, constructed or created naturally, it was hard to tell, but Prime knew what he was looking at. A hole in the universe, a space bridge.

* * *

TBC


	35. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Three'

Thirty-five: Deus Ex Machina (Part Three)

* * *

Skyfire agreed on Prime staying, in his absent, offhand way. Perhaps it didn't matter one way or the other that his privacy would be invaded. Prime had seen him make love to the golden seeker-clone. There were no more secrets between them.

"This redoubt was made for you, anyhow," the giant said.

"You mean Prima."

"The same."

Prime didn't want to correct him. And that was how he came to live with Skyfire in the ice palace on a distant moon.

The journey had not been as comfortable as a long trip to Cybertron. Perhaps great distances had a way of putting themselves right, time given a chance to twist and unkink. Prime felt aged after the fall through the space bridge. His armoured joints snarled, fit wrong. The silence after the roaring second of transit seemed too vast.

Still shaking from red-shift, Skyfire showed Prime to Prima's black-glass berth and left him there.

"I have business to attend to. The bridge-sickness will wear off in time."

Titan's orbit followed strange cycles of daytime and darkness. As he recovered, Prime moved about from room to room like a machine that had lost its internal compass. Each section seemed constructed around a particular individual, from the size of the doorways to the width of a ice-encrusted berth.

The nights were long. The magnetic interference of Saturn brought strange recharge dreams. No getting away from memories and mnemonics of sex, not when the walls dripped with raw sensuality. Mechs cavorted on every spare plane, sometimes in active agreement, sometimes not.

Even with Starscream in his history, Prime's preferences still swung towards the mundane - consensuality, affection. He'd been forced by circumstances to deny himself either.

Skyfire avoided him for several days.

During his long time alone, he often wondered if he had made the right decision coming to Prima's redoubt. The ruthless pornography of the walls exhausted him. The endless etchings did exactly what the artisan had created them to do - keep the subject at a high state of erotic anxiety.

He would eat energon in his room, brought to him by unseen mechanica, and watch as the gas-globes illuminated a soldier-mech being taken by his conqueror, on his knees, obscene humiliation.

"The Warrior."

He turned around to see Skyfire, finally, standing behind him.

"I was wondering when you'd come out of hiding," said Prime, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

"My projects need attention."

Prime narrowed his optics. Not the projects. His golden clone. Bad enough to think of Skyfire spilling into his little homunculus when Prime was in grieving, but he could hear it, too, Skyfire's deep, low-frequency bellows caught by the ice-stone, transmitted through the material and into Prime's room.

"Did you take Starscream in that position, Prime? Before you ended your liaison?"

He could feel the hard pinpricks of his optics boring holes into Skyfire's exoskeleton. He knew he should not speak to Skyfire of their relationship, but a pathetic jealousy gripped him, envy for this mech who had first pushed his mass into Starscream, who had first held him in overload, who had been the first to receive kisses flavoured with wonder and gratitude. It was different from the hate Prime had felt towards Megatron, more like the despair of one who wasn't first.

"Yes," Prime gritted, and was rewarded with Skyfire's look of surprise. Almost instantly he was ashamed. They were fighting over a memory.

Skyfire nodded and turned to leave. An offhand remark was thrown over his shoulder.

"You can join me for communion tonight. I rather enjoyed your company, when you were here with your friends."

Surprised, Prime nodded in return, accepted the invitation.

Later that night he joined Skyfire at the long table in the main hall. Past the severe columns was a view of the dark ocean. The surging edge filled the room with a hiss and a song. Strange, sinuous things lived out on that methane sea, and during the long twilight dusk of sunglow Prime had heard them calling to each other, plaintive alien songs that just sometimes sounded like a word in old Cybertronian.

Tonight they fought each other, songs giving way to screams of rage.

Skyfire pushed forward a plate of energon.

"Eat more. I notice you hardly touch it."

Prime stared at the pile of glowing gels. The energon was so rich here, pale white to the point of invisibility. Far too much for the pair of them, but when he shook his head at the offering, Skyfire shrugged, took the plate, and consumed it all in one sitting.

"Tell me about Cybertron," said Skyfire. "If the Prime sits here in this castle unguarded and alone, something has happened."

"Cybertron is dying. Emirate Xaaron had been overthrown. It won't be long now."

The energon gel in Skyfire's hand lit up his face. A monster screamed out past the ice-floes.

"I guessed as much. Its infrastructure was fragile even when I lived there. The true cost of war is more than bomb blasts and casualties."

He ate the gel, and his pale face faded into the shadows.

Prime made a move to speak, then stopped. It was Skyfire who continued for him.

"I can see what you're thinking," said Skyfire. "You're thinking - what if I could take all this bounty, this planetoid's energy wealth and transport it to my dying planet, my broken people?"

Prime's voice was little more than a whisper. "There's enough energy here to support Cybertron for a thousand years."

Skyfire sat back. The digesting energon gave him a heat haze. "You can't take energon through a bridge," he said. "It would dissipate within the singularity of the wormhole."

"Maybe if we could fly it out on an ore miner..." Prime said, and even then he knew that he was talking scales that even an ore transport vessel could not contain. Cybertron once had thousands of ore fleets servicing the planet - since the war there would be little more than a hundred individual crafts left, and no energy to rebuild more.

"And who would be the receipt of such a bounty? The empties of the lower strata who no doubt are starving? Or the Alphas and Elites of the sunlit side, who have the wherewithal to commission such vessels?"

Prime hung his head. "I know. _I know._"

"You could never magnetically contain enough energon for a whole planet. Not even for the mere hundred solar years it would take for Cybertron to restore its infrastructure..."

A monster died out there in the methane sea. Prime pressed his hands together, strength and power wasted here. He didn't know what else to do other than fight. In the spark he felt them, his old ghosts. Alpha the lawmaker. Vector the Leader. Nemesis and his restless cruelty. Nova, greedy and expansive, jealous of his dark parent, wanting to be more than the Dark Prime ever was. He had been more, had stretched Cybertron's resources to breaking point, and had crumbled under the weight of its own delusion.

And further back, the hateful longing of Prima for her prisoner. Ghosts.

_"These are not your memories,"_ the priests would say. _"They belong to the Spark and Matrix you keep alive."_

But why were they so _personal_, if all he was, was an observer, merely looking on the memories of others?

"...all these things are not your fault, Optimus Prime. The flaws and cracks in this manifold were installed a long time before your arrival."

"Maybe not my fault, but it's still my responsibility."

A low look from Skyfire. He was a mech who had lived a long time and knew many secrets. "You may forget that you were never made to rescue Cybertron, but others have not. The things wrong with that planet...they can't be fixed."

* * *

A communiqué came in from the cold, a narrowcast on slow waves. Even in the distance and low fidelity Jazz sounded beside himself with despair. "We've had to destroy the main space bridge. After you left, something happened back home. Refugees started coming through...too many...Prime, we couldn't save them all..."

Prime didn't want to hear the rest. He took the communication crystal from its bowl, and the voice ceased. The great room shushed and groaned from the restless tide.

Skyfire had given him the subspace receiver, a gift perhaps. "The sea monsters sing in many frequencies. You will notice that the deepest ones echo the Autobot phonemes. Perhaps the Beast ancestor who gave you your language."

He had expected alien music. He had not expected Jazz speaking to the darkness, to an absent leader who had abandoned them, and for all he knew might not even be listening. Had not expected the sliver of news, but imagined the worst anyway, a thousand mechs pouring through the primary space bridge before the decision was made to destroy it. It was that, or repopulate Earth with their own energy hungry species, destroy two planets, not one.

Prime had seen other mechs in states of shock, sometimes in the middle of combat, how their programming would loop and turn in on themselves. Seen mechs stand in the middle of a firestorm of artillery, unable to make a decision to duck or run and instead just standing in the line of fire like broken things. He'd seen mechs so traumatised they could not even make the effort to eat.

Now he felt what they felt. He'd run up against a wall. There was nothing he could do. A threatened storm broke, and the rain fell against the ice palace, sizzling away the methane crystals.

One of the repair mechanica had returned to Prima's chamber. Prime could sense the dark shadow in the balcony behind him. It had taken to pacing the balcony ledge, stuttering, broken footsteps that jarred and annoyed him.

"Go away," he muttered.

The robot stopped, and Prime's spark fluttered, sensing sentience. He whirled in his seat.

Someone was standing at the balustrade of Prima's chambers.

Prime recognised the sweep of wing, yellowed light from the petrochemical smog catching a pale surface, tinging it gold.

"Sunstorm?"

The figure turned. Hydrocarbon rain coursed down over Starscream's body. His violet optics were harsh on the ruined shadows of his face. New injuries crosshatched over old ones.

The moment stilled, fraught with terror and shame. They looked at each other, two enemies. Starscream's fists clenched, but it was he who spoke first.

"You weren't on Earth. I looked for you there."

Prime saw the turmoil in Starscream, as if he'd joined the mad oracles of the Kaon Deeps. Something had driven Starscream here, back to the one who had captured him and tortured him, who'd hurt him more than Megatron had ever done. Something terrible.

"I came here," said Prime. "It was safer for...my friends."

"I remember this place." Starscream said, then stopped, mouth a hard line. "Energy rains from the sky. This planet taunts me. It's an abomination that you should be here while our people starve."

Prime stood up, stepped forward, "Starscream, I..."

Starscream struck him, hard. A harder blow than back in the Prime chambers, this one was a balled fist, knocked Prime sideways, and Starscream hit him again, scoring the colour-nanites from his cheek.

Prime didn't fight back. Let Starscream's fists connect. Preferred this quick pain to the fug of hate and despair that had swallowed him so completely before.

"Get on your knees!" Starscream's voice was stretched beyond breaking point. "Mighty Prime on his knees, swear obeisance to me!"

Prime obeyed. Starscream needed this and Prime felt his need as a ghostly roil of emotion, of humiliations he'd received as a leader, of everything he'd suffered as Prime's lover, as Bondmate and yes, slave. He knelt on one knee first, until Starscream kicked him in the shoulder and made him fall to his hands in a posture of submission and humiliation.

"Look at you," shouted Starscream, his Decepticon accent like raw metal on stone, "you grovel before me! If only your Autobots could see you now, less than nothing!"

A foot-spur in Prime's shoulder, pushing him upright. Their gazes met.

The universe had contracted around them. All that existed was Starscream and his pain.

The seeker stepped closer, and his expression was taut with loathing. The rain fell harder, sluicing over Starscream's shoulders.

"Why am I here Prime? _Ask me why I'm here!_" Steam rose from him like a living halo.

"Why...?" started Prime and was rewarded with another blow. His optic nanites stuttered in distress. He pressed his hands against the stone.

Starscream stalked a circle around him, a ruined, starving mech. "I should kill you, I should end the corrupt Prime lineage once and for all! You've destroyed our planet! You've murdered us!"

Starscream was speaking the truth. Prime didn't bother to correct him. The Prime line was his alone. He was meant to be the last. It was meant to be this way, ended here in Prima's berthchamber, built for her when she had never come. Prime pulled his chest open, revealed spark and Matrix. The rain fell into his open chest, burning him. The Matrix writhed. Without a common language it experienced Prime's emotions only as pain.

"Take them," he breathed. "Take them, finish it."

The end was close now. Memories jostled for prominence, bleeding out all those times he'd been forced to reveal himself to the High Council, just like this. Body-memory of spreading his chest-pieces for his first lover, Nova's favourite. Harsh lessons in reality. There were gentler recollections afterwards, being taught by Elita, the friendly nights with soldiers, Jazz, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Perceptor, other nameless Autobots who had come to him in respect and honour, and Mirage who had not.

And last of all was Starscream, the aborted attempts in the fumbling first days of their relationship, capped by the ruinous, loveless meeting of the bonding ceremony.

The blue sparklight cast severe light across Starscream's hunger-pinched face. Prime flinched when Starscream touched his spark, but did not fight him.

Unexpectedly Starscream's hand slipped between his legs. Snarling, Starscream wrenched aside his pelvic armour. He jolted his exposed massflesh towards Prime.

"Make me overload first, rust you."

Startled, Prime stared at Starscream. "Star..."

"Shut up and do it," Starscream grated. He pushed his groin towards Prime's face. "Slagging do it."

Prime groaned in confusion, lost. He fell forward and nuzzled into Starscream's protoflesh core, gasping at the remembered taste of him, cut with the bitter electrical latency of a mech who'd not overloaded, not for a long time. The heady colourscent of protoflesh filled his olfactory receptors, made him reel.

Starscream's legs buckled at the contact. A knee pressed into Prime's shoulder for leverage. Sharp guttural noises escaped Starscream, and Prime couldn't tell if he was in ecstasy or pain.

The monsters were singing now, an alien call to rain and deep night, and Prime slid into their harmonic, sung into Starscream the song of the slave to a master. A traditional song from an epic, but never sung as Prime sung it, spark-wrenched and pleading.

The Matrix remembered Starscream, remembered Starscream's mouth, remembered pleasure, and forced Prime to remember.

Starscream's climax came in a matter of seconds. Hot protoflesh stained Prime's chin, filled his mouth. No cry of overload, just a shudder and slump of exhaustion. Prime caught Starscream's waist and eased him down onto the dark floor. The red and white of his nanite armour was startlingly intense against the obsidian, but Starscream's dark face was obscured. Empty.

"Starscream - why _did_ you come here?"

As if he were drugged or throttled Starscream said, "Make me forget. Make me hate myself. Like you always do."

"Star..." Prime groaned, unable to stop himself, the terrible forces that ruled his body. He knew he could have taken Starscream then and there on the cold floor, that he was being invited, that it was consensual for all that was left of their ruined relationship, his deep and secret yearning to be invited in, for all that a Prime never needed an invitation and could just take, and take.

Caught between the devil of his desire and his good self, he let his forehead fall between Starscream's unresisting cheek and shoulder finials. His hands gripped Star's arms, as much to hold him away as to keep him close. His exposed mass was aching in the cold air. Starscream's heat made him gasp in his restraint. He was too weak to push himself completely free.

"Oh Primus, we're over. I've done such bad things to you. Don't do this."

Same monotone, beating it out. "I've failed. I've condemned my people. Cybertron is in ruins. I deserve nothing more...than this."

Prime gritted his jaws. He bit back a hopeless shout. Starscream had come here to punish himself, and how better than upon the mass of his captor? The Matrix was a nest of poisonous things. They were at their lowest point. There was nothing he could not do to Starscream that was worse than what he had already done. Prime pulled one hand free of his death-grip of Starscream's arm, raised trembling fingers to his chest.

"Touch it. Touch it like you did before." A different timbre was in his voice, harmonic layers of infrasound.

Something in that stranger's tone snapped Starscream out of his mood. Recklessly, Prime grabbed Starscream's hand, put it on the Matrix, forced him to rub a frond, forced him to keep his hand there and touch him like he had before he left, make his enemy touch the most holy and sacred thing in all of Cybertron, make him despoil it again.

Starscream glared at Prime, did not resist him, did not pull away. Prime groaned from the sensation of touch to the Matrix that was not steel rake or spike, not the twisting press of a electrode. Had there still been a shred of love left between them, had Prime not already degraded Starscream utterly, he would never have been able to make him do this. Beyond disrespect. The Matrix responded, sweated gold, roiled in hideous delight.

Then the overload. Like back in Cybertron, his body taken over by something larger, stronger than himself. It was more than a climax. Prime gasped, and bit back a cry.

Finally Starscream snatched his hand away, scrabbled back. "Straxus!" he cursed. Matrix-gold on his hand, gold bleeding from Prime's chest. Prime sobbed from the comedown. He had ruined the sacred relic of Primus for this terrible moment.

"Rust you and your corrupted race," shouted Starscream, trying to wipe the offending gold from his fingers. "You people have destroyed us all in your worship of this _thing_."

"This is all I am," Prime returned, almost savage with despair. "A holder of a parasite, a leader of slavers. What did you think you were coming back to?"

His optics shone hot indigo. "This isn't happening again."

Starscream transformed, a vicious dance of blades and points shearing through spacetime as he rearranged himself. Blue fire ignited the rain, made the bedchamber writhe in flame. Prime was forced back, colour nanites boiling and popping along his armour.

Time was torn and shredded, and Prime was crushed under the emotional weight of what had happened. Shaking, Prime half-crawled to the berth. Pain in his chest, the same pain as he felt under the forks. Maybe he'd killed it.

He picked the wet, flaccid laminae of the Matrix from his spark and in disgust pushed them back into their depression, half believing at any moment the Thaumaturgie would burst in and have him beaten for even this. Their world destroyed, god desecrated, all under his watch. He was a stupid mech, brutalised by guilt and loneliness. He had seen his planet's end. He had lost the one thing that mattered the most. There was nothing in his programming to allow him to self-destruct. He was caught, imprisoned by his own pain.

This was the No-Spark. This was Hell.

* * *

TBC


	36. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Four'

Thirty-six: Deus Ex Machina (Part Four)

* * *

"Someone came to you last night."

The long nights of Titan were illuminated by bio-glows and enclosed gas-jets. Even the gels cast a sickly light. At night the temperature plummeted. The ice palace finials, melted by rain, now recovered. Morphic resonance reconstructed the long spires, the hydrocarbon crystals aggregating with a machine-clatter. Shooting stars flash-burnt through the atmosphere.

"Was it him?"

"Yes." He pushed the gels away, not hungry. When he looked up at Skyfire, he was struck by a sudden honesty. "He came to kill me. And I gave him the opportunity to do it."

"Yet he did not." Prime detected an odd, mournful note to Skyfire's voice.

"No."

"It would have come easily to him. It was the trait that endeared him to Megatron the most. That ruthlessness. You must have given him something of importance. Did you make love to him?"

Prime let out an incredulous sound, and Skyfire nodded.

"You have restraint, Prime, I grant you that."

Prime was still vocalising disbelief. "You think I didn't want to? You think I didn't want to take him to my berth after weeks of looking at this _this_?" He pointed at a particularly lewd mural, where a chained mech serviced two other slaves under the sphinx-cool observation of their owner. More than once his besieged mind had wandered to a particular scene, and imagined himself there.

"This is a slave palace, Skyfire, I'm trapped by it. I want to be critical of these images, but I'm not. They get under my armour. I can't recharge without thinking of them. I want to forget everything, but the memories keep bleeding out of me."

"It was that way for me, for a while."

Prime looked across at Skyfire, and with a gut-punch of recognition saw himself as he would be, if he allowed himself to stay here. A half-mech, a shadow. How long would it be until he finally gave up and took on a clone as a lover, relieved upon it his old desires?

Skyfire did not miss Prime's anguished cyberemones, the way he silently judged the life Skyfire had chosen. In silence the big mech finished up and left the table without a further word.

* * *

"Oh Primus, Optimus, I've missed you. You don't know how much."

"Enough, I would say."

Bumblebee wrapped short, stubby arms about Prime's waist, and gave an affectionate slap on his lower back in lieu of his shoulders, and Prime realised how long it had been since he'd enjoyed the contact of another, how he had missed it so.

Smiling, Prime gripped the small soldier's shoulder, warbled back a short reply in the little Insect he knew, roughly translated as, "Friend, you are welcome." He was rewarded with the interlocks of gratitude on Bumblebee's face. He could still remember a time when it was unseemly for a Prime to speak anything but High Autobot, or even speak to anyone.

Skyfire regarded Bumblebee with some suspicion. "You're a sun-side Insect Caste, aren't you?"

"Only half," said Bumblebee. "My mass donor was pure mech - not Alpha, but close enough."

Skyfire tutted. "_That_ must have gone over well with your high-ranking Moiety."

"Bumblebee is my most loyal soldier," said Prime.

Skyfire narrowed his eyes at Bumblebee. "You were part of the Autobot team who retrieved Orion from the Decepticons?

"Yes." Bumblebee was guarded and cautious.

"Then you would remember the God Soldier, Paraselene, who tried to steal him away?"

"The traitor, I remember him. I remember you."

Skyfire huffed, and stalked off.

"I don't think he likes me very much," said Bumblebee, once Skyfire had gone.

"Don't mind him," said Prime. "He's just lived here on his own for too long."

"You mustn't trust him. He knew you...I mean...the mech you used to be. He tried to stop you from being born."

Bumblebee was indignant, but Prime couldn't work up enough anger to even care. "Perhaps he had his reasons."

"Optimus, you're too forgiving, sometimes."

Prime took Bumblebee up to an observation tower on the northernmost end of the palace, where the constant artwork was less confronting - more war, less erotica. Bumblebee looked out across the open ocean-lake, and was suitably awed by a pod of monsters sporting in the far distance. Black loops and coils broke the surface tension of the calm sea. He tasted an icicle, was startled by the energy-value of such a common thing.

"So much..."

"So much, a whole sea of it and it even falls from the skies. Yet not a drop can go through the space bridges."

"Ahhh," Bumblebee mourned.

"How'd you find a way through?"

"Wheeljack has kept the Ark's spacetime scar open," said Bumblebee. "That part of the ship is so riddled with time paradoxes, even atomic clocks run backwards. It must have opened up when we were doing tachyon testing back when-" He stopped, remembering that that was the night Megatron had come, taken Starscream away.

"Evidently. You're here."

"You look tired, Optimus."

"I can't say that it's easy, being away from my friends."

"And it's not quite the same without you. The humans keep asking all the time. I tell them you're away on business."

"I'm thinking about going back to Earth."

Bumblebee was silent. They knew it was not going to happen.

"Perceptor and Wheeljack have set a date for the bonding," said Bumblebee, falsely light-hearted. "One Earth month from now."

"I'm sorry I'll miss it."

"Maybe you won't. They're thinking of coming here."

Prime irised his optics down. "It's too much."

"They want to. We all want to. The end is so close. The last mechs that came through the desert space bridge they..." He stopped again, then, "But that's in the past now."

Prime moved to the edge of the balustrade. Filter out the smog, and the gas giant dominated the sky. "Bumblebee, do you think I made the right decision, running away?"

"You weren't running away."

"What was I doing then?" He turned to Bumblebee. "Cybertron is my home, no matter who leads the Council. It lives inside me. If Cybertron dies, what use is there for a Prime?"

"Optimus..."

Prime backed down. "Forgive me. This place, this solitude. I'm turning into Skyfire." He rubbed his chest, a movement that Bumblebee didn't miss.

"When did you last spark-share?"

The insect caste were known for their directness. It was a trait that echoed in the bluntness of Decepticon languages, the brutality of the shadow-side mechs.

"Not since my Bonding Ceremony."

Bumblebee gave an inadvertent insect chirp. "That was no sharing, Optimus. I meant _really_ sparkshared."

"I've done other things," he mumbled, did not add that he had done them in disgrace and shame.

"No. To open your spark to someone. Properly. The last time a mech held you and took your burdens, relieved you?"

No louder than the slap and sigh of the dark ocean Prime said, "After Starscream was taken from me. Perceptor...it was an act of mercy." He declined to mention what Mirage had done. They were all so long ago.

Bumblebee nodded, needing no more information. "That's a long time." He took Prime's hand. For a small mech he was strong, the sensory pads in his palms rough from weapons handling.

"I've been without for longer."

"And you became so wound up you ended mass sharing with a Decepticon prisoner."

Prime released Bumblebee's hand. "Why must everyone intend on dragging that carcass out?"

"What did he give you Prime, that none of us could? You could have had anyone."

"Yes, anyone," said Prime bitterly. "Anyone who lay beneath me with their optics off, lifeless and a metal ingot, and me too afraid to hurt them. Or anyone who crawled over me like I was some icon to draw strength from and then walk away, leaving me wanting more and never being able to ask for it."

Bumblebee recognised his own actions, and opened his mouth in mute protest and apology. When he spoke, it was in his own defence. "But you're Prime. There are things none of us could demand from you."

"I wanted that. I wanted what Jazz and Prowl did, what I saw my soldiers do. I wanted to be touched and caressed and to give pleasure. I wanted someone to look on my body and _not_ just see a Prime, not just some construct of violence."

"Did Starscream give you those things?"

Expelled, defeated breath. How different from the time he'd spoken to Mirage, on the ship. "He showed me their existence and possibility. He showed them and took them away again. Perhaps that's why I wanted to punish him afterwards - his taking away my ignorance and leaving only a wound."

Bumblebee took Prime's hand again, then both of them. "I will stay with you tonight."

"Bee..."

His broad, round face was serious. "I will give you that."

Prime wanted to laugh at the futility of it all. "You say it like it's a duty, my old friend."

"It is not a duty."

Prime considered it, he did. He'd made love to Tesselax's slave in worse conditions. But to subject Bumblebee to his hungers, to start taking it out on his soldiers, was to open the same door that had driven Nova Prime into madness.

"Let me think on it tonight."

"My offer is sound."

"Your offer is noted."

"You need this, Optimus. And you are still my Prime."

Such cool words between them.

He showed Bumblebee the rest of the palace, and then some rooms for him to stay. "They look like a Priest's quarters," said Bumblebee, running a finger along an etched wall and then looking up at a fierce portrait of Primon. The first Prime was glaring down at the narrow berth as if ready to strike any miscreant down who dared to sport upon it.

"Virgin Prime," Bumblebee chuckled in Insect dialect, then explained the term with much embarrassment. "It's a irreverent term Insect castes use, Prime, please don't take it seriously. But he never took a consort. Budded instead."

"Possibly," said Prime. "Maybe he just never found anyone. The universe is a big place."

Bumblebee took a breath.

"Do you want to do it here? Or do you want me to come to you."

Perhaps it would have been easier to say _no_ if he had never sparkshared with Bumblebee. However he had. Once during a campaign beyond the Polyhex borders, and once after a defeat at Tarn. Jazz, his regular sparkpartner, hadn't been around at the time, Prime had been anesthetised by burnt energon, his knee was trapped in a metal cast, and they'd been waiting for their delayed medivac. Intimacy had just happened.

"Look, Bee," he said, "I'm feeling restless tonight. I'm going to stay up and help Skyfire with some mechanical problems. Ask me later when I'm about to recharge."

"Let me come with you."

"I need some time to think about it, 'Bee. I'm not the same mech I was back then."

Bumblebee nodded, and let him go.

* * *

Prime spent the rest of the daylight hours helping Skyfire cut some bricks out of the ice, to shore up a wall weakened by hard sea and storms.

The rain fell in merciless sheets and needles, sloughing off a layer of colour nanites so the ice ran red at his feet. The dense ice-blocks slipped in his arms. The mechanical cutters snarled and broke, and Skyfire made Prime dig the blades free. Prime did not mind a second of it.

The feeling of being tired from honest, physical work, to feel his body burning under the armour was something that Prime needed. He even forgot about Bumblebee back in the old priest's berthchambers. When he returned to Prima's room he decided not to call on 'Bee. There would be time enough to address that problem later.

For now, the constant wash of his memory had ceased, and he recharged without assistance for the first time in many weeks.

Natural recharge was quicker than electro-mechanical charging, and he was cycling into the shallows when he heard the delicate footfall, the change in the berth-gel density as another weight settled near his shins.

"Oh, Bumblebee, wait-"

An expelled breath. Alpha-bot dialect saying, "Well, well, it didn't take you long to find someone else, did it?"

Prime rocked upright, nanites fluttering raw phosphenes in the darkness. Two sets of optic glows, one crimson, one purple, stared back at him.

"What in Primus...?"

He reached out for a chemical globe, shook it on. Harsh light spilt across the berth. Starscream stepped back, arms folded as if barricading himself off from Prime. Blitzwing was wearing sulphur-yellow stains across his black knuckles. Nanite skin and massblood.

Prime didn't know what stilled his sword hand. Perhaps Starscream's emotionless gaze.

"What did you do to him?"

"He's not hurt. Just won't be interrupting us, that's all," said Blitzwing. "He recognised me from a former altercation. Was not quite ready to see reason."

The Decepticon triple changer spoke in such a curiously proper form of Alpha. It didn't fit his mutated, mass-heavy body. His Decepticon brand was crooked, the old lesion sunk deep into his armour. Pain was celebrated among Decepticons. His scar would have been worn as a badge of loyalty.

"I hope you are reasonable, Prime."

Blitzwing crept forward onto the berth again, dark wings retracted, recklessness in his optics. Prime had seen 'bots run into firefight with that expression. He pulled himself back, readied to strike.

"Blitzwing, don't make me fight you. The war is over."

"We aren't going to fight."

Hand to that marked chest. And all of a sudden Blitzwing had spread his chest-plates, revealed his crude, crimson spark, knotted and ugly from his mutation. Prime was shocked into stillness. Crimson facets played across the obsidian glass of the berth. What was going on? Why was a Decepticon doing this? His panicked gaze found Starscream's. The seeker's face was as hard as an executioner's.

"Open up for me, Prime, you-"

-and a voice shouted out, "STOP!" as a plasma canon whined into full power. Searing light, burnt atoms, Bumblebee did not have the inertia to handle such a huge weapon. It misfired, and took out the ice floes at the overhanging roof. Shattered ice rained like a scatter of diamonds.

Before Bumblebee could right himself, Starscream was on him, knocking him down and wrapping him up, forearm pressed into the feeder lines at the small mech's throat, crippling him.

Prime pushed Blitzwing aside and deployed his sword. Hot flame sizzled along the blade.

"Let him go, Starscream."

Starscream yanked his arm tighter. "Come no closer, or his head leaves his body!"

"None of us have to die here tonight. And I will take out those new eyes of yours if you hurt my soldier."

Starscream hissed at him. Over his shoulder, Blitzwing had seized up the pilfered cannon. It was big, of a size for Skyfire to hold, but Blitzwing was strong. He would not miss the shot.

"Stand down, Prime."

Bumblebee spat out some unintelligible words in Insect Aspect. Blitzwing replied with a shout. There followed a barrage of yelling and curses from all three, a strange, whistle-clicked argument that Prime could not understand or contribute. Only one word stood out. _Home_. Within seconds he realised that it was less of an argument and more a discussion. Bumblebee's angry expression turned to uncertainty, as if whatever was being said was making sense.

"The Kaon Stockpile," Starscream said sudden and viciously. "What is it?"

"I don't know!"

Starscream's hand dug into Bee's neck.

"Wait! All right! Nova kept an energon stockpile there," gasped Prime.

"That, I know. My informants tell me every Prime had a stockpile, a hidden reservoir of energon. What I want to confirm is, are the other stockpiles still intact? Where are they located? How much energon is there?"

Prime shook his head, not comprehending.

"You're not going to tell me? After all you've done to me, you deny me this?

"I don't know where any of it is. Primus, I don't know!"

"You knew where Kaon's was!"

"I only knew of Kaon because my first sparklover knew!"

"Sparklover-?"

All of a sudden Starscream dropped Bumblebee, cursing.

"Bee!" Prime took a step forward, and was warned off with the cannon's barrel in his back.

Bumblebee rolled away to safety, rubbed his throat, gulped air.

"His knowledge came to me," Prime said between his clenched jaws, "becausehe had been Nova Prime's favourite. When we sparkshared, I received that information. I don't know about the others. I cannot help you."

"You're a Prime. Can't you just slagging _remember_?"

"I can't access those memories."

"You lie!"

"Once, maybe, but I told you, I cannot speak to the Matrix. The communication is cut." He hung his head. "The Prime line was corrupt beyond repair, selfish and evil. They all knew it. The Council. The priests. Why would they want me to continue that darkness?"

"You were willing to continue it back on Cybertron."

Prime ignored the barb. "Starscream, even if you recovered all the energon ever hidden, there would never be enough to feed the entire planet."

"No," said Starscream. "No! There's something we've missed. Something you _know_."

Bumblebee stood up, rubbing his throat. His words hurt him, he pushed them out. "Optimus, listen to them. They may have a point."

Prime did not retract his sword. "A few words in Insect and you belong to them now?"

Bee threw an angry glance at Blitzwing. "He's more than their translator. He's their interrogator." Sullen pause. "_Spark_ interrogator. He uses his Alpha codes to shred a mech's memory apart."

It was not to sneering Blitzwing that Prime turned, but Starscream.

_There's something we've missed. Something you know_.

"You send your interrogator to my berth, Star?"

"If there's anything in the Prime Spark, any past memory, Blitzwing can retrieve it," said Starscream flatly. "You've stated in the past you were willing to die for Cybertron and its people. Now you can prove it." He settled back on his heels. "That is, if you don't value your life and your disgusting organics more than your own planet."

Bumblebee began to gasp, dry wracking sobs. Bumblebee knew what Prime could look forward to, if he submitted to Blitzwing. Bee had been the only survivor when Blitzwing had spark-drained his entire squad of memory and intel, back in the Great War. The Autobots had rescued a mech who'd seen his comrades be reduced to dumb mechanica. Now he was allowing the same thing to happen to his Prime. Now he was complicit.

A cold rage filled Prime. Did they think he wasn't suffering for Cybertron? Did they think that every waking moment was not an anguish, as the Matrix slowly slipped away from him, its children slipping away to the All-Spark?

"Yes," he grated, "Yes, why don't you come and read my spark, Blitzwing?"

A hesitant breath. Blitzwing didn't move. His alters were conferring now, in his abominable head. They were whispering words of warning to him. Prime could smell the cautious cyberemones.

Starscream shouted at him in Insect. _Do it!_

"He won't." Deep, sorrowful voice from the darkness, the keeper who had been watching them the whole time. "Because he's seen what waits for him."

* * *

The two Decepticons gorged on energon like prisoners granted a privilege for a betrayal. They hated each traitorous mouthful, but could not stop eating.

Prime watched as Skyfire's optics map out Starscream's body. He'd never been familiar with jealousy, but now he felt it, hard.

Starscream looked at neither of them, or Blitzwing either. The triple's hesitation was a slap in the face, the ultimate lack of courage. Starscream was disgusted by them all. At the great table, he only spoke to Bumblebee, traded discordant and hate-filled Insect words.

They did not share a language between them. Prime had always spoken to Starscream in English, that alien tongue. Blitzwing knew every Cybertronian dialect, but no Earth ones.

"We'll speak into my translator, and we will all understand each other," said Skyfire. "This place is still under my management, and you are still guests."

Prime did not miss the gun-turrets at Skyfire's shoulders. Had he not been a scientist, had he not chosen to bury himself in all this ice, he would have made a formidable soldier.

"We can all talk in peace," said Prime, hearing the translator repeat his voice in a strange echo. "We are not Autophages. There was no need to bring an interrogator here, Starscream."

"Optimus," said Bumblebee, forcing each word out. "We need to take a chance, that a previous Prime could have left a stockpile, or a zero-point machine, _something_. As much as I hate Blitzwing, I know that he could see something in the past that you cannot."

He too could be impassive, while the rest of him seethed. Not since he'd been spark born had he been treated this way, a useless container in the way of sacred knowledge.

"But Blitzwing hesitated," said Starscream.

"I wasn't..." Blitzwing started, and Skyfire raised his hand.

"Starscream," said Skyfire, "I was there on the day the Decepticons came for Optimus Prime. I saw Megatron put his hand into Prime's chest and lose it. Blitzwing saw that, too."

Blitzwing nodded miserably.

"You remember the story of Prima?" Skyfire continued. "How Alpha Duex's Second tried to interrogate her and learn the secrets of Cybertron? You remember that Starscream? It's no mere spark-child's tale. The Matrix will tear Blitzwing's spark out of his chest if he attempts to approach a Prime spark in coercion."

"Nonsense," spat Starscream. "I've touched it. Your filthy god. I've put my mouth on it, made him spill. I could have torn your spark out of your chest, and the Matrix would have let me."

The silence was as shocking as a body blow. Bumblebee covered his mouth, staggered away. Retching sounds in the shadows.

"Yes, you did that," said Prime tersely. "Because _it_ let you. But it won't let _him_."

Blitzwing turned to Starscream, "Perhaps you could-?"

Starscream leapt to his feet, revulsion on his face. "I am not doing _that_ again," he shouted. "Never, you hear me? Never!"

Skyfire reached over, put his hand on Starscream's arm, murmured some words. Starscream calmed down.

"Prime," said Skyfire. "You know there's a solution."

"That I let Blitzwing in."

"Yes, that you let him in like a lover would, let him go deep. You're an Alpha, Blitzwing, I can hear it in your accent. You could unlock the Prime codes, bypass the intrusion countermeasures."

Starscream looked at all of them in disgust before walking away.

* * *

_"I said I would do it. I said I would take that intel out of him."_

"I can't ask this of you."

"You're not asking. I'm doing. For Cybertron."

"Those slaggers do it for pleasure, you understand? Pleasure! You don't want that corruption getting under your armour plates, Blitzwing. You don't want him infecting you too."

A weighty silence followed. The translator might have been a relic from old days, and Blitzwing's words might have been out of context, but there was no mistaking the emotion.

_"Is that what he did? Did he infect you?"_

Starscream did not answer. Prime felt awful, listening in on this private conversation, but he was about to let a Decepticon Interrogator into his most vulnerable places. The translator flubbed the rest of the conversation, but the meaning was clear. The two Decepticons were psyching themselves up.

"Do they know we're listening?" whispered Bumblebee.

"Perhaps," said Skyfire. "But soon they're going to know for certain."

Bumblebee nodded, then stared at his feet, a defeated gesture. He'd come here to greet his friend and leader, and only ended in dredging up bad memories. After Starscream had mentioned the Matrix, touching it...he had lost a touchstone.

_"What is it Starscream? You think I'll become smitten with him?"_

"I don't know. It's a danger."

"Don't worry. I've pulled out the intel from a hundred prettier prisoners that I was half inclined to mass-share with beforehand, and not a one of them left an impression on me."

"But still..."

Skyfire passed a hand over a hidden sensor, and the computer terminal sunk back into the desk. "This is good information. I'll let you discuss what you intend to do."

Bumblebee let out a scattered laugh once Skyfire was gone. "Primus, if any of the others knew what we were doing..."

"And they won't know," growled Prime.

"Prime, is what he said true? You let him touch the Matrix?"

The darkness seemed to close, the atmosphere too energy rich, as if any minute it would explode. Prime was defiant.

"I'd rather he'd pulled it out of me. Nobody understands how hard it is to live with that thing."

Starscream appeared at the door. The shifting light played across the silverscars. Bumblebee pushed past him, upset. Prime was too exhausted to call him back.

Starscream looked at Prime for many seconds before he spoke. "We're ready."

* * *

TBC


	37. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Five'

Thirty-seven: Deus Ex Machina (Part Five)

* * *

"I'm staying." Starscream was resolute. "I swear, if you hurt him Prime, I'll kill you."

"It would be easier if you weren't here."

"Why? Memories of what you did to me?"

Prime frowned, held back the sharp reply. "This might be a violent act for Decepticons, but sparksharing is intimate for us."

He had declined the use of Prima's room with its huge berth of ice-shards. For all it was grand, Prime was always unsettled by the purpose. Stasis units in the architecture, the need to hold a large mech down. By the time the palace had been built, Prima had begun to display her captive Warlord in public like some degenerate pet. The builders knew the necessity of accommodating her.

So Skyfire had shown Prime a smaller room, as intimate as intimate could be in the palace, the ice-mortar infused with gold shavings that caught the reflected gaslight, the berth low and wide.

With a start of deja-vu Prime knew this was to have been Emirate Xaaron's room. The Prime Consort that never was. He'd always seen the Elder as having been ancient at incept. But once he had been young. Once he had been chosen to partner with a living god. Prima would have been little more than a spark-child, a mere tool for the Elder's wishes. After the war with Alpha Duex she was equal to a Warlord. There was no room for love in the couplings of a Prime, but then Xaaron was no automaton. Perhaps he felt sadness at losing his promised consort, even if she was a Prime.

"Pretty golden room," sneered Starscream. "Who was this intended for?"

"A councillor," lied Prime, "or perhaps a priest."

Blitzwing stalked the perimeter, looking for weapons, stasis units, traps hidden in the walls. Prime watched him with increasing agitation. The Matrix would not for a nano-second believe that this mech meant to do him anything less than harm.

"I'll be over here," said Starscream. He settled into a corner. A curiously restrained frieze overhead depicted Emirate Xaaron taking the hand of a young and deferential Prima. A murder of Thaumaturgie looked on, impassive.

The weapons rack on Starscream's forearms glinted in menace. Prime kept his shoulder wedged against the doorframe, to keep himself from trembling. Long ago he had wished to bare his spark, him and Starscream in a room together, experience the quiet moments before sparksex in intimacy and joy.

Not like this.

He had asked Bumblebee to stay. But the smaller mech had his own daemons. He'd witnessed Blitzwing in action. He'd seen friends die. And Skyfire would never have fit through the door. So Prime was alone, with enemies.

Blitzwing turned from his searching. "It seems suitable."

Prime sat on the edge of the berth.

Blitzwing viewed him from the wall. "How do you want to do this?"

"Sit down, Blitzwing," he was surprised at how hard his voice was. "It won't happen with you standing over there."

"I've done this before, Prime."

"Not for pleasure."

"Pleasure?" Blitzwing scoffed. "I hear the tales that you use it in erotic play, but I hardly see the value in it."

A flash of indignant anger. This was Autobot culture Blitzwing was talking about, the foundation of their people. The Matrix was wary.

Blitzwing reached for his chest, and stepped forward.

"Wait. Not so fast." Prime held up his hand. "Just lie down. Here. Talk to me."

"I am not about to prolong this indignity." Prime saw the sideways glance at Starscream, the concern there.

"You know Alpha dialect. Even your accent is not so Decepticon. Which means you were an Autobot once."

"I was never and Autobot, never!"

Prime went on, insistent but not aggressive. "Alphas would never have accepted a triple as one of their own. They would have told your incept-parent to abandon you. But your parent did not."

Blitzwing's jaw worked from side to side. He sat on the berth. "What we do now, we do for Cybertron. We do for our home."

"Yes," said Prime. He willed himself to shut out everything around him, the four walls, Starscream, the mech below him. Surrender himself to darkness, the freefall of spark entry. Prime had made love to many mechs before. They always went this way, rigid and still, full of portent. Every act of intercourse with a Prime was important to them. He recalled how some would not even overload at first, they were that awed by him. He'd learnt patience then.

So different from his experience of bodysex.

Carefully, aware that he was under Starscream's intense gaze, Prime leant forward, let Blitzwing become familiar with his cyberemones before he lowered his face-plate.

Blitzwing's reaction was one of suspicion. He expected what all Decepticon's expected, horror. He did not understand what his optics were telling him.

"Can I kiss you?"

"Yes."

Slowly, Prime moved his mouth over Blitzwing's own.

Blitzwing tasted different from Starscream's, no startling colour-flavour, more like the blandly familiar Alpha-colour. No different from making love to an Autobot, really. If he kept thinking that, the Matrix would stay retracted, and it would be over quickly.

"I need to touch you now. I need to know you, so the Matrix will know you, so it will not sense you as enemy."

A pause, then Blitzwing nodded. Prime could smell his fear. The interrogator had always been the aggressor in spark-meeting.

With gentle hands Prime began to trace Blitzwing's armour, testing and cataloguing each interlock. He was a big mech, bigger than Starscream, his triple-mass giving him a greater solidity and size. He was stubborn at first, and Prime had to ramp up his senses to feel for the hitch in Blitzwing's breath, the stutter in circuit communication.

The challenge was on. Odd, to be so cool towards a lover, and yet having to take him to great heights. With Starscream he had always been far too ramped up to take his time, driven by the authority of his own desire. Now he was on slow time. Now he could show Starscream just how good he could be.

_Are you watching, Star?_ He opened his mouth wider, pressed his tongue into Blitzwing's mouth while the same time pushing a thumb under a lateral armour plate. _I'm going to show you what you've been missing._

It was like flipping a switch. Blitzwing let out a startled yelp, arched his back and Starscream raised out of the seat, null ray sights on him like a crimson tattoo.

"He's not hurt," said Prime, never breaking contact, "Tell him, Blitzwing, you're not hurt."

"Not hurt..." gasped Blitzwing. Prime's thumb still worked the tender spot. "Not hurt."

Prime leant forward, whispered in Alpha, "You want me to do that again?"

A nod, and Prime moved his mouth to the fulcrum of Blitzwing's jaw, slid his thumb all the way along the interstice of the armour plate. Blitzwing hissed. Prime traced Blitzwing's thighs with a free hand, eased his legs apart, slid between them. They would not mass share, but it was easy to accommodate intimacy in this position. Blitzwing's sense memory knew this, let his defences fall.

He murmured into Blitzwing's audios the words you might say to a protoform about to experience his first overload. "Take it easy, it's alright, this might be uncomfortable at first but trust me..."

Prime could smell Blitzwing's arousal. He closed his optics. Could smell Starscream nearby, thought about Starscream on his berth just like this. Thought about all the times he had mouthed the tessellations of Starscream's armour, willing him to open up. His mass was tight inside his pelvis. Starscream would be able to smell him, smell the way he was beginning to sync with Blitzwing.

He slipped his mouth down to the serrations of Blitzwing's stomach, navigated them. Blitzwing's breath was loud. But not the only one.

_Do you remember Starscream? When I did this to you?"_

He let his mouth slide along the chest seams before his fingers did. Opened Blitzwing like a book. The Decepticon took his hand for a moment, then let it fall away. A triple's spark was big, didn't have the same symmetry as a usual spark. Memories and personalities conjoined. If Blitzwing had been merely doubled, he would have been issued as a twin, one of a pair.

His own spark responded, blind. He felt that old sickness rising up in him, guilty lust, need crosshatched with emptiness. A moan escaped him, his mouth sought out the other's. Prime slid his spark into place, locked in, and fell.

* * *

Once connected, they wrestled for dominance. Prime might have known all the correct overtures to prepare for sparksex. But when it came to taking information, it was Blitzwing who knew where to go. Prime plummeted through his memories. Blitzwing flung open locked doors, smashed through corridors he'd never let even his closest friends go. But he had no desire to probe emotional secrets.

Unlike Perceptor, Blitzwing didn't stay long at Prime's incept, during the time the Thaumaturgie sung down the new Prime into Orion's broken body.

_Two threads,_ Blitzwing was saying to him. _One Silver. One Gold. The gold is the Matrix. But the Silver one belonged to the mech who gave your body._

Follow the Matrix thread. The silver one only leads to the Pit.

But they both have Alpha signatures.

Prime was confused. Alphas traced a line to Alpha Prime. A Pit mech would never have had Alpha codes.

He had no time to ponder those possibilities. Blitzwing set off along the golden path. The sightlessness of the Sentinel Autophage, the glorious ambition of Nova Prime...

_Ah, now we're about to receive great knowledge._

Blitzwing carded through a million memories. Prime struggled to keep up. The Sapphire Berth. His first sparklover. A mech with Starscream's face...

_God Soldier._

The list of caches.

_I've got it!_

Nova Prime pushes his mass into his consort. The Thaumaturgie are singing. They are calling for the Matrix to speak, for the new Prime to be born...

Prime overloaded, pulled Blitzwing into the corona of pleasure, made certain he came with him, made certain he was still shaking and peaking as they surfaced.

Elita had taught Prime well. Enemy or not, he held Blitzwing until it was over, waited for the circuit storm to die down. Blitzwing was still attached. It was wrong of him to think of Starscream, but he did anyway, and Blitzwing felt it.

"Now I understand," murmured Blitzwing. Perhaps in some other situation a murmured intimacy, but Blitzwing was only expressing thoughts out loud.

Prime uncoupled. Immediately his attention swung to the corner, where Starscream had been sitting. But nobody sat there now.

"Might have been too much for him," said Prime. He sat on the edge of the berth, gritty with crystallising lubricant. Before attending to himself he leant over and checked Blitzwing's spark, something he knew he should have done before he had started.

Somehow, seeing the scars of an old sparkbreak was tragic. Blitzwing had shared sparks so often and never known pleasure?

Blitzwing watched Prime quizzically, probably thinking that only an Autobot would care over such a thing as a broken spark. He stood up, began to wipe himself down. In his excitement Prime had accidentally mass-spilt across Blitzwing's stomach like a spark-child who couldn't work out spark from protoflesh. With an Autobot, Prime would have been embarrassed. But Blitzwing didn't seem to mind.

"I doubt Star would be squeamish. He's seen me interrogate others before."

"I think you know what I mean."

"You hope he still feels for you?" Blitzwing's voice was sharp, conflicted.

Prime shrugged, tired now. He wanted to go to a wash rack, clean off, get some recharge. The memories Blitzwing had unearthed were slipping from him.

Back in the great hall, Bumblebee and Skyfire were keeping vigil.

"That didn't take long," said Bumblebee.

"I wasn't going to dally with him."

"They'll go back to Cybertron, now, however they came here," said Skyfire. "They'll go back and in time we'll see if this incursion has brought anything of worth."

"All I saw was how little worth we Primes were."

* * *

The servants' wash racks were standard Cybertronian facilities, bare steel-alloy. Once he had excused himself, Prime stood in the hard spray. Sparksex often drained him, but this had been brutal.

The click-step of another mech pulled him out of his self-reflection. Starscream, looking withdrawn, preoccupied. His surprise at seeing Prime was quickly replaced by coolness.

"I would have thought you'd have used Prima's facilities."

"They were never really completed."

He could sense the residual heat coming from Starscream. The long, machined thighs were limned in wet highlights. Prime's hands clenched reflexively. Starscream had just mass-shared with Blitzwing.

"I thought you were going," he said, mulish.

"We are going. But I have to wash. Friction." A snort.

He didn't want to leave it like this. Prime. "I think Blitzwing found something. I hope it works."

"We'll see."

"You will tell us?"

"If we do not return, then consider it to have worked."

"If you don't return, I could also consider that it hasn't worked at all, and you're all dead."

A sideways look. "Isn't that what you left Cybertron for?"

Then, oddly enough, Starscream looked uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." Then, "Thank you. For allowing us that information. I've been..." He moved his head around distractedly. "It's been difficult."

"Are they really that bad?"

"Cybertron is a mess. They're so desperate for food...I've seen 'bots cannibalise themselves for energy. The black energon that no other would eat...they kill each other for it. Bluecake even. There are civil wars, mech against mech." His eyes narrowed. "I should not talk of these things to you."

Prime stepped close. His respiration was loud.

"I still love you," he said in High Autobot, no room left in him for self-protection. Starscream did not know the language, but how often had he heard Prime weep that phrase on climax? He knew its tone.

Starscream frowned, but not out of anger. "Yes." Then, as if he'd just realised it he said, "We have never been together out of choice."

"Choice?"

"I've never underestimated choice. To make my own decision. Not as a slave. Not because I have to, or I have nowhere else to go." The delicate pavements of his dark face pinched at the memory. They had not spoken about the forced bonding yet. It would have to happen. "Choice. Not because that if we were _not_ together, the shadow side of Cybertron would rise up in hunger and anger. We did, and they did anyway."

Prime nodded. He knew when he was being rejected. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. His loss had matured now to an old disappointment. It would stay with him until he died.

Starscream nodded. He walked to the balcony, and transformed without looking back.

* * *

TBC


	38. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Six'

Thirty-eight: Deus Ex Machina (Part Six)

* * *

If there was anything worse than war, it was in waiting for the outcome of one. Bumblebee made two more trips back to Earth, and on each return came back with the hopes and concerns of a hundred mechs.

"Nothing," said Prime, "nothing."

Then Bumblebee left for good, and Prime was left on his own.

There were moments, when he thought Starscream had returned, when he saw the slice of a wing, or heard a footfall outside his room. And once he woke from recharge to find Skyfire's golden clone staring down at him.

It would have been easy just to take him. But the empty optics frightened Prime, to know that there was no life behind them.

But before the eclipse season had ended, Blitzwing came back.

He stumbled into Prime's room. Prime caught him, laid him out on the black ice.

"Food," croaked Blitzwing. There was a brand burned on his cheek. Severe face of Alpha Prime, the Autobot logo.

Prime fed him the rest of his uneaten energon meal. Blitzwing gorged, then gasped out his story.

"The information I got out of you was good. Nova Prime, Nemesis Prime, Vector Prime. They all had stockpiles."

"But you're not here to say that."

A quick, painful shake of his head. The mech was close to rigor with starvation. "We tripped an alarm on one of the Stockpiles. The Autobot council know what we were doing. Took steps."

"What sort of steps?"

Blitzwing stuffed the last of the energon in his mouth.

"They have him. Starscream."

Prime would have cried out if it wasn't for the mask. Let out some guttural, _No._. Because Starscream wouldn't be some minor Decepticon miscreant. He would have been their devil. Especially to Meridian. Nothing so personal as Starscream returning to Megatron in disgrace. And now the Autobot hierarchy didn't care about keeping him alive.

Blitzwing grabbed Prime's shoulder. "He can't be allowed to die, Autobot!"

_Harden yourself. You have no relationship any more._

"I can't do anything."

"You can go back. Offer yourself in exchange. You for him."

"They'd never take it."

Blitzwing fell silent.

Prime's optics widened. "You gave them the offer. They accepted."

"We need him back."

"I can't."

"You claim to love him. You'd die for your people, and Straxus, even those fleshlings. But not him?"

The bio-light inside the globes made Blitzwing unearthly. There was still an Alpha majesty about him. Prime felt insubstantial, as if any spare wind would blow him away. "Too many things have happened. Too much time has passed."

"Are you saying you won't do it?"

"I'm saying I need some time to think."

Blitzwing opened his chest. His sparklight was such a deep crimson, it was the colour of human blood. "I'll show you something, and you can make your decision."

"You could just tell them where I am."

"He'd never forgive me."

He would have said no, if he had the strength left in him, but he had no strength left.

"Is he all right?" he whispered, even as he opened his chest. "Did they hurt him?"

"My spies tell me he is not hurt. Several of our best leaders were captured, on that day. But he will be made an example of."

Prime didn't need to kiss him. But he did. It was not love. Not gratitude. It was a punctuation of silence. It was the signal.

Blitzwing was all prepared to receive knowledge. The Matrix peeped out, not certain. Prime pushed it back in under his spark, deepened the kiss. Blitzwing let out an inarticulate sound.

With his sensitive fingers Prime stroked Blitzwing's flanks, palmed his stomach, dipped between his legs. Not a sparksex repertoire, but a familiar one to Blitzwing.

"Ah, it takes no effort to come to you Prime," and Blitzwing was wry even as his cyberemones registered agitation. "Have you ever mass-shared with a triple?"

"No," said Prime. He brought his mouth to Blitzwing's spark. It could be considered _ugly_ to those who prized symmetry in their mechanical bodies, but Prime never judged. He breath-kissed over the shining lobes until Blitzwing panted, and forgot what he was gong to say next.

Prime locked his own spark in, and dove into memories, but not far, because he wanted to see now, he wanted to know. Now he was in Blitzwing's body, striding the long corridor of the palace, his chest throbbing in a strange, almost delicious heat. He could feel Blitzwing's confusion, the remnants of his overload like a tuning fork struck and held fast.

Blitzwing was wondering, had Starscream experienced this? If he had, then it made sense that he had stayed in captivity for so long.

Starscream was waiting in Prima's old room, leaning against the balcony as if ready to boost himself over the edge and fly away.

"Star? I thought you would stay. I didn't think you would leave me alone."

Through Blitzwing, the static trills of Decepticon sounded beautiful. Blitzwing's second language was a clean language in his mouth.

Starscream turned on Blitzwing. "All you had to do was get the information out of him. You didn't need to keep going."

Blitzwing shrugged in surrender. "I wasn't prepared for that complication."

"You stink of him," shouted Starscream, "his lubricant on you. You submitted to him like a whore!"

"Star, stop it, calm down, we discussed this."

It happened quickly. Starscream's attempted punch, Blitzwing seizing Starscream's wrists and Starscream pushing him onto the slave berth. There was a struggle that concluded with Starscream straddling Blitzwing. Riding his sensory memory, Prime heard himself cry out, a guttural vocalisation as Blitzwing's mass pushed into Starscream's body. A universe away Prime's hips jerked into nothing, while here Blitzwing lay back and let Starscream use him.

Starscream was slick with arousal, optics wrenched shut, neck cords straining. Blitzwing's erotic reaction was subdued from his mutancy, from years spent as an outsider. Desire was not something he succumbed to. Starscream was frightening him.

"Tell me what it felt like, when he lay on top of you," Starscream gasped, rubbing his chest-seams, "tell me what he said when he was between your legs, say it in his language...did you want him inside you? Did you want him to fuck you?"

Stunned, Blitzwing said nothing, but Starscream had disappeared into his own desire and was committed to overload. His hips jerked reflexively. "Optimus, Optimus," he cried, as the savage frequencies of overload lashed him, "Dark Straxus, Prime, harder..." He drove himself on Blitzwing's mass. _"Primus inside me, God Primus!"_

Prime knew Starscream well, knew the pattern of his climax. The way he froze, and his protoflesh became dense so that it almost hurt to be inside him, before he released. Starscream collapsed on Blitzwing, shaking and sobbing. Prime groaned with frustration. He could feel Starscream through Blitzwing's spark, the weight of him, yet could not touch him.

They lay one on top of the other for only a second, before Starscream slid off and lay at Blitzwing's side, panting. Blitzwing was wrenched with disappointment. He had not overloaded, and overload was the furthest thing from his mind. Starscream had cried the name of their enemy, their enemy's god.

"I know what you're thinking," said Starscream, monotone. "And you wouldn't understand."

"I don't want to be a replacement, Star."

"You're not." Despair marked his features. "Being here, with _him_ around...my body betrays me." Starscream pressed his thighs together, wincing. Prime could hear his own sharp gasps as he fought inside the memory-body.

"It will be better once we leave here. I won't have to think about him all the slagging time."

Blitzwing's memories picked up speed. They were flying now, deep into the crushing atmosphere of the Saturn Gas Giant. One of the other moons. So this is why Starscream was concerned about friction. At these densities even methane was like plasti-gel. They tumbled through a space bridge, emerged onto a Cybertron perpetual twilight, the old Decepticon redoubt of Kokular.

From the great, corroded dome of the ancient city, Blitzwing looked out over the plains and levees below. There was something shifting and broken about the metal architecture, how it cracked and seethed at the edges of the smelting pits.

As his sight resolution sharpened, Prime realised that it was not the desolate landscape, but the shoulders of a million mechs, gathered about the base of the city. They had come, drawn not only by heat energy, but the rime and crust of the smelting pit boundaries. A thousand mechs might have been able to glean a living from the pit-sides, but a thousand times more were camped here in flight and desperation. The atmosphere was soupy with cyberemones and metal shavings, sick and terrible.

In one close corner a dozen smaller mechs crouched around the falling body of a larger one. At first he thought that these might be spark-children praying by a parent. A second before Blitzwing's seeker-sharp attention was wrested away he saw that they were licking at the massblood of a corpse.

Starscream and Blitzwing were greeted by a trio of Decepticons. Two insect caste members, Shrapnel and Bombshell. Another triple...he searched his data-memory, the intel that centuries of intelligence gathering had brought them. Octane.

"Did it work?" said Bombshell.

"Get him a terminal," growled Starscream. "Then pull together every spare mech who's functioning."

As the Decepticons scattered, Starscream hauled him close. "Don't say a word about what happened between us. Don't."

Just like fast forwarding through camera data, blurs and streaks. Odd moments of stillness, a word between one Decepticon and another, Octane's chiming laughter (Prime could sense Blitzwing's infatuation with the golden triplechanger who spoke in pure Decepticon and had never known an Autobot shame), a song snatched from nowhere.

Blitzwing's info had been solid. Through the memory tesseract, came the result. Ten separate energon caches were isolated and found, then dispersed among the refugees. No joy or gratitude from traumatised mechs. They ate and recharged.

Then Starscream's face once again, the face that commanded armies.

"It's not going to last. We've only staved off the inevitable."

There were downsides to the sudden burst of energy. They had the strength to fight now, and their wasteful battles resumed. Over the perpetual dawn horizon, the sunlit cities held their own against the hoard. But they were a mere skin on half a hemisphere. A whole planet, inside and out, threatened them. The Autobots had always put mechs second to culture. Even Prime carried that old weakness, when he would decline to hurt a human to save a friend.

Time ground on, inexorable, and the memory-river slowed. Starscream huddled with Blitzwing under the overhang of a destroyed wall. Precious artworks were ruined upon its surface.

"There's something I've been meaning to tell you," said Starscream. "I feel that I've missed something. A clue. Something." He pressed his hand to his head. "My maker cloned me and my brothers from a God Soldier. I'm supposed to remember important information. I can just taste it, and then it is gone."

"We have to go back..." started Blitzwing, started to say it as the atmosphere suddenly sucked out of the space, and his words were lost, and the world turned white.

When he came to, he was lying in a blast crater a kilometre across. He hurt all over, pain upon pain, exquisite layering. His fingers touched the topmost layer, felt the burn-sear on his face. Knew what it was. He'd seen bodies mutilated. It wasn't part of Autobot culture to do such a thing, but the war was making monsters of them all.

"Starscream..." his voice came out a throttled choke. "Starscream, _STARSCREAM..._"

Prime pulled himself off Blitzwing so fast he thought he might have done himself a psychic injury. "I can't," he gasped, "Blitzwing, I can't go there."

Blitzwing sat up, closed his chest. "So now you know what the Dark Queen knows."

Prime frowned at the old aphorism. His memory cores were teetering between the horror of Cybertron's decay, and the bittersweet personal joy of seeing Starscream cry out his name on overload.

"My incept parent used to say it. _Now you know what the Dark Queen knows._." Blitzwing slung his elbows over his knees, the way Starscream did, sometimes, probably didn't even know what he was doing. All those unconscious gestures and tics Prime had thought were Star's, really belonged to all Decepticons. "You know things that are not supposed to be known. The darkness inside an Autophage's pure mechanical spark heart."

Prime patted down the agitated Matrix, closed his chest.

"Knowing what you know, will you help him?"

Prime rubbed his temple, cornered. "When Starscream first returned to you...the Decepticons," said Prime, "Megatron made me listen as he tortured him. Every time he's been taken, by Megatron, by me - it's damaged him. What's he going to be after this? What am I returning to you?" He shuttered his optics. "I loved a mech once, and then he was gone."

"He's stronger than you think," said Blitzwing. "He survived you." Hard look that eased into something contemplative. "Remember, I understand now, why he couldn't quite leave."

Prime thought about Meridian. His memories were not good ones. "I'll do it," growled Prime. "You tell them I'll come back. But I'm not going to them as a slave. I'll go back as their leader, their Prime. I'll put a stop to this war."

Blitzwing had lived though too many realities to be moved by mere words. "Say that now. Wait until you see the planet."

"I don't have to. You've shown me enough."

He seized Blitzwing's arm, hauled him off the berth. Indignant, Blitzwing struggled.

"What do you think you're doing Prime?"

Prime wouldn't let him go, marched him to the slave passage that lined the sea-wall. "You're coming with me. I'm going back to Earth, I'm rounding up my people, and then you're going to show us the way back to Cybertron."

* * *

"Count me in," said Jazz, even before Prime had finished speaking. "Which means Prowl says yes, too."

Prowl threw up his hands, before shoving them under each armpit in a funk. He had no other choice but to follow his Bondmate. Nothing was making sense. Prime had returned with a Decepticon. One he'd definitely had sparksex with. Prowl was too experienced not to notice these things, the way Blitzwing would sync a movement unconsciously, a pronunciation of a word.

Though it was low of him to think it, for a second Prowl halfway wondered if this was going to be another inappropriate lover, another signpost to a disintegrating leadership. He had known Prime all his life, known how shaky the moral foundations were. Not Optimus' fault. The Elders had wanted a Monster. Prowl darted glances at the Triple, and clenched his jaw. Beast Moieties rejected the existence of such creatures. To have one come in, speaking his perfect High Autobot and being so familiar with Prime...it was unthinkable.

Ironhide and Bumblebee rounded out the retinue before Prime held up his hand. "Too many, and it looks like I've come for a fight," said Prime. "Perceptor, I need you to stay and run things from here."

"I'd rather go with you."

"After Prowl and Ironhide, you're the only one with the status and clearance to access the Teletraan networks." This he said. But internally he commed, _I don't know what sort of condition he'll be in. It's been an extraordinary war._

I want to see him.

Not if he's dead.

Is he? You would know.

He would, if their bond had been strengthened. If they'd made sparklove at least once after. But he'd officially sparkshared more with even Blitzwing now.

Prime placed a hand on Perceptor's shoulder. The Alpha-mech would do as Prime wished. The time had come.

"My friends, prepare yourselves. I'll alert you all on the widecasts when we're ready to go."

* * *

The temporary bridge in the Ark's hold would not open until Earth nightfall. The ionosphere made the exotic matter glitch, made the scar shimmer and fade.

"Best wait until we're behind the sun. I don't want you playing with dinosaurs," said Wheeljack, and Prime wasn't quite sure if their inventor was joking.

Needing to find some time alone, Prime made his way onto the Ark's nose, the last vacant place for ten miles in either direction. The Ark was full beyond capacity. The hangar had been sub-sectioned, and mechs wedged into crate-sized spaces. Even Prime's old rooms had been taken over. Ten mechs berthed there now.

"Why are you going back to them? For him? He doesn't love you any more."

So Prowl had found him. Normally he would have let Prowl argue until he ran out of bluster. But there was always a nagging feeling around Prowl, that he was not quite a Prime, that we was still little more than a spark-child.

"I was made aware of some things."

"Made aware? By spark-_whatever_ you were doing with that freakish Decepticon? Did it occur to you that Starscream will let Blitzwing see only what he needs to see?"

Prime bent his head, a submissive gesture he'd never managed to get rid of, ever, but his voice was hard. "You never accepted our relationship. Not once."

Prowl's expression gave way slightly, and he made a show of examining the landscape. Beyond the nose the Cybertronian refugee encampments occupied precise concentric circles. Moieties and clans that might have freely traded on their home planet now locked themselves into tight, homogenous arrangements. Further still, the humans had quickly erected uneven lengths of nine-foot double-fencing topped with barbed wire.

Any mech could have knocked the fence down by an accident. The fence was not for them. Human protesters had gathered like scraplets around decaying protoflesh.

"I think somehow, that I'm at fault, for all this."

"How, Prowl?"

"When the Autobot High Council made me guardian to the Matrix Bearer, I knew it was a demotion. They intended to disempower me. I sometimes wondered if I only channelled my ambition through you."

"It wasn't ambition. It was confidence, the strength to believe in myself. I made my own decision to be a Leader." At a fence line a scatter of protesters had broken through. Army units were rushing to intercept them. There seemed little point. "My hands were not forced. I had a choice. To do what the Council wanted, or to do what I wanted."

"Did you, Optimus? You were either going to defeat Megatron, or you were going to die. By living...you kept the Autobot High Command in power. You kept a corrupt system in place. A system that should have fallen, when we still had the infrastructure to recover from the war."

Prime narrowed his optics. "Sounds a lot like treason."

"Like the truth. Prime, you have my support if we go back there, but by Primus' blood, if the planet has to collapse in on itself - let it."

* * *

TBC


	39. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Seven'

Thirty-nine: Deus Ex Machina (Part Seven)

* * *

Screaming in the corner of his mind, sending bright sparks across the darkness.

Then Starscream woke up, and the screaming was louder and thankfully, not him.

He didn't want to know who it was.

A voice from the shadows said, "I think he's one of yours." Tired, old voice. His Deception was heavy with Autobot phonemes. A platter was slid in his direction. It rattled over warped metal and stopped at Starscream's feet. A lump of melted black jelly wobbled on top.

"I saved you some energon. I wasn't certain if you'd die or not but...I'm an old mech. I don't need so much energy to keep me alive."

Groaning, Starscream sat up. His joints felt as if they had been wrapped in barbed wire. He had remembered speaking to Blitzwing and then...

Then this. Starscream quickly took stock of his situation. The walls were rancid with damp and rust. His insides contorted with claustrophobic panic. From an impossibly thin crevasse a mech vermin squeezed out, headed straight for the platter of black energon. Starscream picked the ugly, writhing thing up, crushed it in his hands.

"Oh, don't do that. You can get energy out of a mech-vermin's reservoir. They'll eat anything."

Disgusted, Starscream threw it away, and the creature's armour made chiming sounds on the steel floor. As if the dead thing's hunger-ghost had passed on to him, Starscream became ravenous. The black energon tasted of pit-rime and dead mechs melted down. He devoured it. "Speak for yourself," he said between messy bites, "But I have not fallen so far."

"You have no idea how far one can fall, Starscream."

_That Autobot knows you. Be careful._

He was automatically on guard. Phantom pain bit into the wounds where his weapons had been.

Finally deciding to reveal himself, his companion leant forward so that the sliver of light caught his face. Starscream could not suppress his gasp.

"Xaaron!" he almost choked the name. "I had been made aware there were some changes in Autobot high command but never this."

"You thought that since Meridian had taken over, I must be dead."

"I thought he'd have been thorough."

Xaaron shrugged. "He has you. He has been thorough, removing a rebellious leader from the dark-planet. Now their attempts to overwhelm Autobot forces will be impossible."

Starscream hissed at him. "Not for long. I don't intend to stay."

"You intend to escape?"

Foolish old mech. Starscream folded his arms. Xaaron chuckled, a deep rumble of worn gears.

"You didn't manage to escape too far, last time you were in Autobot hands."

His carefully nurtured control must have dropped, for his expression made Xaaron laugh again. Then his optics dimmed with a memory. "I was once like you, Starscream, beautiful and loved by a Prime. I was a fool of course, thinking that she would always love me."

"There is no love in Prime couplings," sneered Starscream. "Stop talking nonsense."

"Of course," said Xaaron, droll. "I am a feeble-minded old mech for thinking that."

"Besides, it was I who left Prime, not the other way around."

Xaaron's look of surprise might have been genuine or for theatrical effect, but his words annoyed Starscream. "It was always considered that he had lost his desire for you, and let you go, broke the bond."

"That's not true."

Old, sad optics. _Pathetic_, thought Starscream. Xaaron continued, "I didn't believe it myself, when it happened to me. I wanted to deny it when my people told me that my Prima had taken another lover."

"He hasn't taken another..."

"Another Decepticon. A triple. News travels, even here. I understand how it must be. To be rejected by a Prime, it is like being rejected by Cybertron."

The screaming mech in the adjoining room began yelling in Decepticon hate-speech and Starscream seethed. To tell Xaaron that Blitzwing wasn't Prime's lover was to endanger him. Whatever Blitzwing was doing, it was for the cause, for their people. He had to trust Blitzwing. He had to keep quiet.

_But what if he has?_ a small voice inside him said, _what if he fell in love with Blitzwing when they spark-shared?_

What of it? It's not if I love him any more.

But seeing Prime making love to Blitzwing, the rare ecstasy on Blitzwing's face...

Prime had been so gentle with him, so patient. Doing that thing that Autobots did. Starscream had seen his share of spark interrogations. Seen shame, and humiliation. Seen 'bots scream for mercy and be reduced to mumbling Autophages, brainless. Had suspected, but had not been prepared for Prime's tenderness, the gentle sync and harmonization of one psyche into another. Starscream had been angry with Blitzwing's response, the kind of anger that burns from the inside out. _Jealous._ Watching Prime bring Blitzwing to arousal had brought back memories. The good ones. The ones he'd tried so hard to forget.

He'd never realised how wrenched with arousal he'd been until after the act, when Blitzwing came murmuring his apologies, and they had fought, and then Blitzwing was inside him. The colourscent of Prime had always been astonishing, it was all over Blitzwing, on his epidermal layers, silver trails where Prime had tongued him. Phantom pains echoed along his flanks...

"...I never loved another," Xaaron was saying, mad mech almost frozen with age. "How can anyone else ever match to loving a Prime?"

"Will you shut up, you crazy old 'bot," Starscream hissed. He didn't want to remember the violence of his overload, the way his body shook under a sensory tempest that could only come in the presence of Optimus Prime.

Xaaron fell into a mumbling silence. The screaming mech in the next room was degrading into static. He was being spoken to in a quiet, almost pleasant Autobot language. An interrogation.

Recharge cycles segued into waking ones, and Starscream paced out the perimeter of his cage, certain he would go as mad as Xaaron. He swiped his forearms against the rough walls, steeling himself against the pain as his colour-nanites sloughed off and revealed the long silver razor-edges of his armour.

After a time a buzzer sounded, and great gears were turning. The walls started closing in, forcing them out. Starscream pondered on the shifting puzzle of this dungeon. There would be no place for a mech to feel secure, if any moment the whole layout changed. No question of planning escape, if the routes changed every time a wall moved.

A rank, old energon smell reached them. Starscream padded down the corridor a few paces, stopped. Though he didn't want to wait for Xaaron, deeper instincts told him that Autobot sentimentality was a thing of note. He knew all about ingratiating himself to stronger leaders.

"Get that scrapheap of a body moving," muttered Starscream, and he pulled Xaaron out of their rapidly shrinking cell.

"Fighting," said Xaaron. "You hear it?"

Yes, there it was, a familiar clatter of armour plates the sounds of heavy objects being caught in an inertial field, smashing through, grunts of pain.

"The guards make them fight for entertainment. The winner receives a ration of energon. Real energon, not pit-scrapings."

What Xaaron said would not have made much sense, if the walls had not flung open like mad arms. A descending pit, much like a smelting pool reservoir, arranged itself before them, concentric levels. In the centre, two desperate mechs clashed and beat one another with crudely reformatted fists. They were bleeding dull silver. Autobot blue optics were black with hunger, and still they fought for a screaming, howling crowd.

Starscream looked up. Vertical pipes swayed overhead. The arena had the dusted, furred appearance of a dungeon pit. A torrent of molten metal could come sloshing down on them at any moment. With death so close and so random, what was the purpose of life? The dungeon was a cauldron of insanity.

"Emirate, Emirate," screeched one particular horror, a mech who had lost the lower portion of his body, and dragged himself on bleeding arm-stumps. "They fight in your honour!"

Xaaron didn't seem particularly affected by this pronouncement one way or another, but it wasn't until the half-mech turned his crooked gaze to Starscream that he realised how thorough Meridian was. "Decepticon! Decepticon!"

Like a klaxon alarm, the cry rang out and the crowd swarmed up the pit. Even the fighters paused their relentless pummelling for a moment. The few guards on duty brought down a few prisoners with plasma-cannon spark-shots, but there were too many. They surrounded Xaaron and the Decepticon he had brought. Their blue optics may have been dulled from hunger, but there was still threat.

"Kill it," shouted an Autobot. "Kill the Decepticon!"

The words were yelled in Insect, so that Starscream would be in no doubt what he meant.

"Wait, wait!" shouted Xaaron. "This is not an enemy. It is Starscream, Prime consort." He repeated his statement, in Decepticon.

"Prime consort?" laughed another ruined mech. "The Prime was displeased with his consort and cast him aside."

A ruckus of agreement. Xaaron threw Starscream a look as if to say, _I told you._ Another mech stepped forward. Starscream recognised him as one of the Temple guards, one evidently loyal to Xaaron above Meridian, cast down into the darkness when he would not swear fealty.

"It is true. I would escort _him_ to the sacred berthchambers, to the Blind Ones. Prime did not couple with him, found him distasteful. It was a bonding of convenience only. Prime only had desires for Liege Maximo, and before he returned to exile, they consummated their bond."

"You lie," shouted Starscream, even before Xaaron had finished translating. "Autobot lies!"

The former guard gave him a baleful look. "You accuse me of lying? Not once did he come to you. I delivered Maximo to him personally, and he has assured me that Prime indeed favoured him upon the Sapphire Berth."

Xaaron finished, and added quietly, "You must understand that pair bonds are important among our race, more important than they are to Decepticons. We are influenced more by our Beast ancestors than our Insect ones, Relationship over Swarm. And they would respect it if Prime had remained in love with you."

What could he say? That he had fought and conquered their beloved fighter? That Prime, already aroused to rut, had taken him anyway? It would mean nothing. Since the Bonding, Prime ha never willingly called him to berth, and never consummated the bond. Starscream did not miss the rapt look on their starved faces at Liege Maximo's name – they would not take well the news that he had been defeated in combat.

_I still love you._

"Do they intend to kill me, Xaaron?" said Starscream between clenched jaws.

"Like I said, Meridian can be thorough, too."

The crowd pressed in. Starscream heard the creaking of his fists. He had not the energy to transform. He could smell their hate. He would kill a few before he died. Kill them.

A heavy shape came at him - Starscream lashed out with slashing fist, threw Xaaron in front of him and fouled the lunge of two oncoming attackers, threw a fourth over his shoulder, would have managed a fifth if he'd not been kicked hard in the wing and sent spinning, and in that microsecond his mind was slow and distracted, saying things like, _this was why Maximo made certain to have his wings shaved off. On the ground he was vulnerable._

Another stinging blow caught him on his face. In his disorientation he was seized about the arms. No matter – the mech's own strength supported him as Starscream vaulted over his opponent's head.

He should have been prepared, of course. But one fought on the ground long enough to earn a second space in which to take to the air. The follow-through of transformation didn't happen. He landed heavy on his feet, and his ankle, never at full strength, gave way beneath him. Starscream skidded sideways, landed on his back.

In the background Xaaron was bleating "no," and "stop," but might have been wailing to the moons for all the good it did. His arms were seized. Other hands grabbed his legs, spread them so he was spreadeagled across the floor.

"Rust you! Slaggers! Pit scum!"

An Autobot soldier stepped in between Starscream's knees. Once he might have been noble, a good looking mech. This one was scarred by plasma-canon fire. The sharp features were twisted with hate. He stared impassively at Starscream, murmured words in Autobot.

Hesitantly, Xaaron echoed, "No, our Prime would never raise you above an Autobot hero. You have caused enough trouble among our kind."

Starscream opened his mouth to curse again, until he saw the bludgeon in the soldier's hands. A terror-memory gripped him. The soldier could have been Megatron. His wings ached as if the nanites had been scored off with acid.

"You want to mass share?" The bludgeon slapped in the soldier's hands. "You want to feel something inside that contaminated pit you call your protoflesh? Prime was a _Leader_ before you corrupted him. He was our god. You just made him..." the soldier could not find a word in even the extensive, poetic Autobot vocabulary to explain what he felt.

"Give it to him, Overdrive," shouted one. "Show him what we think of the one who destroyed our Prime."

Starscream didn't struggle, because the time for struggling was over. Hot indigo highlights smeared across the soldier's chest-plates. Overdrive knocked the end of the weapon against Starscream's knee.

"No..." said Xaaron, and a pair of Autobots gently pulled him away, reverent and firm.

"Open his armour, Skids."

Another Autobot approached. He was studiously trying to avoid Starscream's gaze, but failed. A quick, panicked glance in his direction confirmed Starscream's suspicions. Skids was an Ark-mech, and his loyalty to the Autobot cause had brought him here. Perhaps they had passed in a corridor. Perhaps Starscream had spoken to him once, when he was blind.

"Overdrive," said Skids, "we must not do this."

Overdrive stuck the bludgeon in Skids' face. "You dare argue with me now? Perhaps you would rather be a traitor, helping Meridian?"

"We will be a traitor to our own selves if we stoop to this. Prime taught us not to bend to our lesser natures."

"In case you forget," screeched Overdrive, "Prime's lesser nature was wrecked upon this corrupted thing!"

Skids turned to look at Starscream, despairing. Under Overdrive's gaze he knelt by Starscream.

"_Sorry,_" he whispered.

Starscream threw his awareness far from him. He would be up there among the chains and pipes, while his body was demolished...

"Proclamation! All rise!"

The shrieked Autobot words brought him back into himself as if he'd fallen from a height.

"All rise!" shouted the dungeon guard again. "The Thaumaturgie approach!"

Starscream knew the Autobot word for _priest_. Hadn't Prime said it often enough in despair? But why would they come? The hands on his limbs withdrew. Starscream leapt to his feet, ready to fight again. But nobody came close. Skids still stared at him, like an escaped fleshling caught in high-beams on a desert road.

A tremulous chime rang out, the chirping echolocation of blind mechs. The Blind Ones!

They stepped into the dungeon arena. Their rust-red cloaks of woven, anodised titanium made shushing sounds on the dusty floor. Each eyeless face was decorated with whorls and circuitry.

"Lord Prime calls for his Consort."

* * *

He halfway wanted to shout for Xaaron to accompany him. Here on the edges of death and degradation he no longer thought it odd that the former Emirate of the Autobot High Council would be the only one he could trust.

No words came out of his mouth. He was rendered speechless with surprise.

"You'll be back here, and we'll be waiting!" shouted Overdrive as he was dragged off.

The journey was almost vertical, through the pneumatic transports of the Temple. Once in their Preparation Chambers the blind ones began to mark up his body. Starscream fought them, like he'd fought the prisoners. But he was weak from hunger, and had never tested how strong they were. It was like trying to punch through gravity. For every force he exerted, they exerted more. Even those swift movements that could not have realistically been blocked, they blocked.

They waited only to subdue him, and the laser etching began once more. Starscream slumped upon the etching-frame in defeat. They burnt and inflicted their small torture, sung and spoke as if he wasn't there.

"Much has returned to normal, huum-um," said one to the other, mid-verse,

"Prime will not come."

"Rust you," said Starscream.

"Hush," said the blind artisan, "Since when has he ever come for you? Our art does not please him." He dropped his voice "As you do not."

Unceremoniously he was dragged off to the Star Sapphire Berthchamber and dumped on the stone as if he were garbage.

Starscream shook the vertigo out his head. The etching always made him dizzy, the soporific singing of the Blind Ones. The two statues gazed mercilessly down at him, uncaring Primon and his cruel offspring. Oh, they had watched when Liege Maximo had been brought here, and the Blind Ones had fussed over him excitedly, oiling up the colour-nanite surfaces, so he had shone like enamel. The gladiatormech had been so pleased with himself he hadn't had time to get out of the way of the falling statue.

Primon still had a fracture at his neck, where the repairs were hot quite subtle. "I see you've got your head back, you rusted piece of slag," spat Starscream at the statue.

"Yes, did look better without it."

Starscream turned around, and half-obscured by shadow, was Optimus Prime.

* * *

"I'm sorry I had to see you like this. They wouldn't allow anyone into the dungeons. Even me. I had to invoke the right of Prime to even get this."

Starscream didn't speak, only looked at him with a turbo-fox glare. Prime couldn't quite let his attention settle on the markings on Starscream's armour. The fractals and whorls did something to his processors, made everything resonate in different dimensions, made his grip on reality skew off. He was suddenly hyper-aware of the cyberemones in the room, whiskers of floating colour.

Startled by his reactions, Prime quickly unwrapped the energon he'd brought. As Starscream scoffed down the gels, Prime concentrated on the golden malice in Prima's watchful, hooded face.

After arriving to Cybertron with his retinue, Prime had set about reminding the new administration that he was Prime returning to his planet, not a criminal being brought back in shame. Prowl went on ahead, as was the Law, arranged a meeting of the Council.

Emirate Meridian and those Alpha Council members who had not fled for safer planets were present to greet Prime in the Celestial Temple. They made all the proper words of worship, but Meridian's optics had blazed with acetylene hate.

The Beast Council members stood in the background, nervous. They had not been part of the coup, but they had not agreed with it either.

"Prime, you have returned," Meridian simpered. "You will be pleased to note that certain elements that were causing such...trouble have been dealt with."

"I hear you have Starscream in custody."

Meridian did not bother to disguise his loathing. "We have a dangerous enemy in custody. Have you seen the damage done to the outskirts of Iacon? To the border cities? Have you heard of this destruction while you were away on your organic planet, gorging on their energy? Of course not."

"I want to see him."

Meridian flexed his hands. The rings on his fingers grated against his armour. "I am afraid that is impossible. He is a prisoner, kept in the dungeon until trial. You cannot break the laws of Cybertron. They are the laws written by Alpha Prime. If you break those laws, it sets a precedence, and a precedence means we stumble further into anarchy."

Prime looked to Jazz, and he nodded. It was true. To break one law was to break another, and another. A Prime was a figurehead. A Prime was not allowed the freedoms of others.

No freedoms, except one.

"I wish to see my Consort."

The words were simple, but the intonations severe. There was more than a mere meeting, but a ceremony.

_He thinks of the rites of body and sparksex at a time like this._ Meridian's pale face was ugly in its rage.

"It cannot be allowed. Do you know how many we have awaiting trial as we speak? Our society hangs on the barest of threads."

"I am your Prime, and I will see my Consort," Prime had roared. "I claim my right under the laws of Alpha Prime."

Meridian had tried to be officious, but it was impossible, not under the full force of Prime's power. He'd turned towards the Palace guards, imploring them to put Prime in check – but he was merely a politician. Prime was their god. Then to Talix, still the head Thaumaturge despite all that he had done, who cautiously shook his head. This was no time and place for arguments.

"Guards. Escort Prime to the Sapphire Berth. Let him carry out his...ritual."

So now here he was, exercising an Alpha Prime loophole. As Prime watched Starscream eat, he wondered where the law had come from. Alpha Prime was not like his torturous incept parent, keeping her Warlord prisoner-lover bound for her whims. The lawmaker Prime had had many liaisons, was the mass-donor to the many, many Autobots who would eventually seed the Alpha Race. Alpha's tastes ran only into the highest ranking of mechs. There were no prisoners or dungeon-vermin in the sacred Alpha line.

Starscream hiccoughed behind his hand, and finished the plate. "I never thought I'd see usable power again."

"I'm sorry, it's plain stuff. White energon's hard to come by now."

"I'd be flying out of here otherwise."

Prime nodded, but he could not help the sadness in him, like a weight around his neck. "Yes. I would give that, if I could."

His tone made Starscream guardedly grateful. "Still, it's better than the black slag they've been giving us in the pit." Sated, Starscream lay back on the berth, stared up at the domed roof. "What are you doing here?" He sounded so tired.

"Blitzwing said that they had taken you."

"Alpha Torque must have betrayed us. I knew I couldn't trust him." He waved away Prime's frown. "Just a minor warlord, a tin-pot with designs on being the next Alpha Duex."

"Maybe that's what Blitzwing meant when he said your life was in danger."

"When has it not been?"

"He was also saying you had a plan to get us through this."

"Wait," said Starscream, sitting up. "How many people are listening in on us?"

"Only the Blind Ones," said Prime. "And they don't understand English."

Starscream nodded in grudging agreement. No Cybertronian did, except for the Ark crew and the Decepticons that worked with Megatron.

"At least you're here," said Starscream, climbing off the berth. "Now you can get me out of this stinking cage." He made a bee-line towards the doors, tested and found them locked.

Prime rubbed his optics. Perhaps it had been the wrong decision to come here. He couldn't think clearly, looking at Starscream like this, the shifting walls, the heat percolating up from deep levels of Cybertron, where the density and pressures of the planet's core made the metal turn liquid. He turned around, looked at the opposite wall.

"Why do you turn your back on me?"

"Starscream, I'm so sorry, but those fractals on you are messing with my visual systems. I can still hear you."

"Open the rust-damned doors then and escort me out of here!"

"Star, I can't do that."

"You can't? Or won't?"

Prime steeled himself, turned around. "Both. I know I'm back here under sufferance. I had to make use of old laws to see you."

Starscream pounded a fist on the door. "Then get me out of here Prime! My people are dying!"

"They're my people too! Starscream, you need to share with me what you know. You were saying to Blitzwing before you got taken-"

Prime could see then, what his words meant to Starscream. That Blitzwing had gone back to Prime. That they had sparkshared.

"So it's true."

"He had to convince me." He dropped his head. "I'm a foolish mech, sometimes. You of all should know that."

Starscream paused. The train of his anger derailed somewhere between one second and the next. "I know how badly you wanted to...do that act." His voice was gruff. "That _Autobot Malady_. With me. And I never allowed it. Perhaps he gave you that which you were hungering for."

Prime forgot about the fractals for a moment, the constant erotic pressure, almost blurted, _Starscream, don't tell me you're jealous?_

"Star," he said, and it was as if he were trying to tread around something so fragile it could be destroyed with a breath. "There is a great difference between sparksharing for information and wanting to experience someone because you love them."

The moment seemed constructed out of threads and crystal pins. Prime was almost too afraid to let the atmosphere cycle through his mouth-vents, or even to move.

"It's in pieces," said Starscream carefully. "This insight of mine. As if I've been given all the pieces in the puzzle, but I'm not certain where they are supposed to fit. It's like the sunrise on a Vos horizon. It's supposed to be there, but it never comes."

A strange light came into Starscream's eyes.

"What is it?"

"Perhaps," said Starscream. "I remember, before the war...there were solar collectors in Vos."

"Sometimes solar energy reaches that city."

"They were old. Unused. Made for full sunlight. This planet never used to be half in darkness."

"The archives say there was a rotational orbit once. It was stopped. Long ago, during the reign of Prima."

Starscream paced the perimeter of the room, a tattooed shape flicking in and out of the moving shadows. "There must be a switch somewhere, a machine, something that can jolt this planet back into rotation."

"Would it make any difference?"

"We have to make a start. Prime, do this! Logically, the only place for a switch would be in Iacon."

Prime shrugged. It was a crazy idea. Perhaps time in the semi-dark of a pit-hole was sending Starscream's imagination to unfortunate places. The reality was, a million Earth-years of war and a divided planet had lost its capacity to sustain itself. They could have rotation within the hour, but still have no way to collect solar energy.

"I could try and access the databases," said Prime, "and get the information out to your people. But I warn you, the last Decepticon war destroyed most of the networks."

"Please," said Starscream. "Just look for a way."

"You know I won't let you down."

Starscream was silent, would not reply. Prime wanted to swallow his words. _Stupid, of course you've let him down. That's why you're here._

Prime wanted to stay longer, but this place had been made for one purpose only. The room pressed in as if being assaulted by gravity. His protomass seemed too big for his armour. He wanted to find somewhere to be alone and calm down.

"I'll call the guards now. But I will be in touch soon."

"Back to the dungeons."

"I wish I could convince the Temple guards to let you stay in a more appropriate quarters," said Prime, and he could hear how hoarse his voice sounded. "Consort or not, they're not letting you go."

Starscream nodded. Though the language wasn't suited to the kind of information Starscream needed to get across, Starscream listed out some instructions and coordinates that needed to be followed. Prime committed them to memory.

"Give them to Blitzwing, or Bombshell if you can. They'll know what to do."

"This is part of the war effort?" Prime didn't know whether to be pleased that Starscream had trusted him, or horrified that he had officially turned traitor.

"Survival effort. We found the last of the energon caches. If we don't disperse the refugees, there's going to be trouble for all of us." Starscream rubbed his upper arms, where his weapons racks normally attached. "I have to say, it was much easier fighting the war than trying to recover from it."

Prime turned and headed for the door, trying not to break out into a run.

"Prime, wait."

He clenched his fists, stopped, but did not turn around.

"They'll know you never coupled with me."

"Who?"

"The Blind Ones. The Autobots still in the dungeons. They might not translate our indecipherable language, but they'll certainly know if we fucked or not."

His metaskeleton creaked. His emotional stability seemed constructed on ever weakening foundations. "Primus, Starscream, don't bring this up now."

Starscream slid in front of him. His colours were bright, even in the dim room. The fractals seemed to move and flow. "Don't you get it? If we haven't coupled, my continued existence in this pit-hole is very slagging unlikely. I was about to get _killed_ in there before you called for me!"

"Star, no. _No._ I'll tell them to put you in solitary. I'll tell them to watch over you-"

Starscream struck Prime hard across the mouth. If his battlemask hadn't been raised, the blow would have torn off more than a few facial pavements. Prime grabbed Starscream's hand.

"I said no!"

Wild, Starscream hissed, "You would rape me when it suits you, but not to save my life?"

"Is that what it's come down to?"

"Do it," growled Starscream. "Get it over with quickly. But if I walk out that door without evidence of your approval, I might not get a chance to come back."

"I'll tell them I approve!"

"That won't mean anything. Their lives are made up by words and deceit. As far as they're concerned you and Liege Maximo are pair bonded and I'm in the way."

Starscream walked back towards the berth, and boosted himself back on it. He lay back, optics vacant. Angry and hurt, Prime joined him. He'd had enough of violence, but now all of Prime's interactions seemed to have been painted in violent colours.

He leant over to appropriate a kiss, at least to pretend it wasn't another joyless fuck on the remains of joy, but Starscream was having any of it. He turned his face away. "Get on with it. And make sure those slaggers hear."

Quick anger flared up along with the forced desire. Prime lowered his mask and stole his kiss, and Starscream tasted just as good as he remembered him, better even.

Another slap. "Rust you."

Prime grabbed Starscream's hands, interlocked his fingers. "I'll only be noisy if I enjoy myself."

"You always make a slagging racket Prime."

"Do I?" A broad kiss again, tongues darting, Starscream's hot energon taste. Starscream bit Prime's tongue. Made him jerk back, dart forward again, nipping Starscream's lower lip, seeking entry. This time Starscream responded, hard, as if to fight him.

Prime's fuel pumps squeezed and released. An euphoric, crazy excitement filled him. He let his hand fall across Starscream's inner thigh, but wouldn't go higher.

Starscream tore his mouth away. Prime nuzzled the sensitive cables at his neck where metaskeleton wove with the thinnest dermal sheets, and each brush of lip was magnified. Starscream's respiration fluttered there.

"They said," gasped Starscream, "this reduces you. They were ready to kill me for it."

Prime pulled back. He met Starscream's optics. "Then you know its importance."

"Please make it quick," breathed Starscream. "I've been to that place. I can't go back."

That place. The geography of their previous life together, the place where Starscream had loved him and needed him. Starscream's legs were parted perfunctorily, to allow him access. All Prime had to do was roll on top of him and take what was offered, Starscream wouldn't fight. And Prime wasn't certain that he would _not_ take advantage of such an offer. His body was master over him.

"Are you saying you won't let yourself feel this?"

Prime ran a knowing thumb along the ridge that opened up his pelvic cradle. Hard pressure would make the armour retract involuntarily. But he wasn't going to let Starscream absolve responsibility.

Starscream groaned, and the raw blue ion scent of pre-overload reached Prime.

"I won't climax. You're not achieving anything by extending this."

Insolent, he dipped into Starscream's mouth again, revelled in energon and spectral flavorsight, murmured in wicked encouragement. Knowing that he had been defeated in this little battleground Starscream opened his armour, gasped as Prime pressed his fingers into the density.

"You've missed this," said Prime, and he moved lower, mouthed in between the armour plates at Starscream's flank. "I can taste it." Star's hand brushed his cheek, half as if to push him down to his protoflesh core, and half to push him away.

"All right," grated Starscream, pressing his fingers into his core. "I'll overload. Then you overload and we'll be done..."

Prime slid each one of Starscream hands into his own. Ignoring Starscream's protests Prime wouldn't let him touch himself and bring a quick resolution. Starscream's back arched. He panted, seeking air to feed the terrible electrical potentiality of his body, the energy demands of overload.

"Now," he ordered, "Straxus, do it now."

Ignoring Starscream, Prime brought him to the precipice, and back, and let him stay there, on the verge of an event horizon of whirling relief, let him curse and yell and call Prime every filthy thing under a dozen suns until he cried out, "_Please_..."

He rose from that hot centre, Star's silver smeared across his lips and chin, threads of liquid flesh, and Starscream's legs fell apart to take him. Prime didn't need any more encouragement. His mass scored into Starscream's body, ripping electrons from their shells, heat and plasma and electromagnetic energy transferred to weight and matter. He shouted in bestial excitement, slipped his hand under Starscream's aft and fucked him raw, assaulted him until Starscream shrieked with indignant pleasure.

There was no hiding how desperate Starscream had been for release. Half a dozen thrusts and Starscream peaked and climaxed in sine-wave pulses, quick oscillatory throbs. Prime felt the harmonics echo through his metaskeleton, setting off an unholy fire. When Prime spent into Starscream, his enemy-lover stared back, wild, a gladiator's stare of defiance even as he shuddered with overload.

"This changes nothing!"

"I saw you and Blitzwing. I know what you said to him."

Starscream's optics widened. "Rust you! Get off me!"

They wrestled, and Starscream managed to twist himself, wings and all, onto his stomach. Prime reached under Star, between his legs and stroked the dense rills of exotic matter until Starscream jolted into arousal again, shouted hate speech Decepticon at him, spread his legs and canted up his aft like a Dead-End prostitute.

"Touch my wings," Starscream was panting, with arousal or self-loathing or hate, maybe all three. "Touch them, _touch them,_" and Prime ghosted his hands over the surfaces, almost velvety with pre-nanites, achingly tender and Starscream arched his back with a sob that turned to a snarl. Prime entered him from behind, slowly now, sheathed his mass the way he'd seen Skyfire make love to the golden clone, and Starscream responded in kind. The fight left him. He became pliant.

Grunting with each push, Prime settled into a rhythm, too excited to care that he was not following the cool procedures and protocols of sex. Starscream matched his thrusts with receptivity, gasping, smell of ripe bodysex climax, clench and release of fingers tangled in Prime's own.

"You like this?"

"Oh," moaned Starscream, "oh, oh...enemy, I will not...oh..."

The pressure built. Starscream thrashed beneath him, pleas to move faster, go deeper, not tease him so. When Prime could hold himself no longer the resolution was quick, the climax brutal in its intensity, sharp throbs of sensation like blows. He groaned Starscream's name over and over as his mass transmuted to liquid weight, splashed out of him.

Prime collapsed onto Starscream, gulping the atmosphere. Had to fight his emotions, not to think of this as anything than what it was, two mechs starving for the clash and scrape of mass_fucking_. But the centre of him seemed filled with light.

Starscream did not move for several seconds. His respiration was like a rattle. At last his hand found Prime's shoulder.

"You're heavy."

"Hmm, I'm sorry."

"Aren't you going to disengage?"

He clutched Starscream's lubricant-shining body close to him. The memory of his overload was close. He could imagine they were lovers, like this. "No."

"You'll solidify inside me. We'll be stuck. How will you explain that?"

"I tell everyone I've decided to go gestalt."

Starscream huffed. He hadn't meant to laugh, but did.

When he was certain he could not remain in where he was he murmured in his withdrawal, the different temperature gradients of Starscream's body reminding him where he was and of the delight which still lingered.

Prime rolled away, silver stranding between their thighs.

Starscream's optics tracked him with naked hunger. Prime experienced an odd flush of heat. His body was desired. He was wanted. He stretched a little, showed off, was rewarded by Starscream staring at the long, powerful lines of his torso before tearing his attention away.

"You understand, Prime, all this is just a show for those slagging blind mechs?"

"I understand."

Alive to Starscream's responses he moved in closer, nuzzled under his jaw.

"Optimus, I wish it were different, I do. But it's not." Said just for the saying maybe, but Starscream's hand rested on Prime's chest, and he accepted Prime's kiss.

With a gentle hand Prime ran a thumb along the hollow under one optic, tracing the silverscars that still looked like tears. Starscream didn't flinch away, leant into the contact with an old, tired sigh.

"Who gave you these eyes?"

"Tesselax. Uh, he was a-"

"I know him."

Starscream's expression hardened. "Of course you do. You saw him for some services."

It was not time to apologise, or wish that things had gone differently. "Starscream, does any of this matter? Now?"

An exasperated breath. "The slagger had some leftovers in his collection. I'm wearing the eyes of a dead mech. An _old_ dead mech."

"God Soldier."

"I don't know. His name was Peri...no, Paraselene."

"Paraselene?"

Starscream nodded. "Seekers and God Soldiers come from the same design. The optics are interchangeable."

"Primus, do you know whose optics they are? Paraselene. He was one of the three God Soldiers who captured Alpha Duex." Prime touched the logo on his shoulder. "God Soldiers. Sacred Sparkchildren of Primus."

"Do you believe that?"

"Believe what?"

"That the _god_ had sacred children, before birthing Primon from the soup of his god-planet mass?"

Prime shrugged. "You're the scientist. All I know is that they were an old and pure mech caste. Not entirely compatible with any mech or beast line. Whatever we came from, they were the first. They were all gone by my incept date."

"Then what is this?" Hand on Prime's chest, over his spark. Over the Matrix.

"Parasite."

"And always the Autobots call it your god. This is a curiosity."

"You can't explain everything scientifically, sometimes."

As he reached to uncouple Prime's chest-plates, the great platinum doors rattled as a Temple guard's fist pounded the outside. "_Time._"

Prime swore under his breath at the interruption. The Matrix was knocking around, wanting more.

"Seems like you only get one overload in this place," said Starscream. Quick sideways look. "You'll remember?"

"I'm on it already." He held out the end of a decorative veil. "You want to clean up."

Starscream's thighs were streaked with silvermass. He tipped his chin up, more regal than any Alpha about to attend Council, not a prisoner returning to the dungeons. "Slag no. I'm going to walk out of here like this. Those eyeless servants can do the cleaning for me."

* * *

tbc


	40. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Eight'

Forty: Deus Ex Machina (Part Eight)

* * *

"Are you crazy?" Prowl tapped his forehead. "You want us to access Vector Sigma?"

"That computer knows more about Cybertronian history than anything put together." Prime folded his arms. "It's not a request, Prowl."

"Abomination," Ironhide said under his breath. Then, realising he had been heard, explained. "Providing we can still find the main terminal, Vector Sigma's more than a computer. It's the sentient link between us and Autophages. You know the legends."

Jazz nodded, "Yes, the living computer. Wasn't it a parent of Alpha Duex?"

"Incept parent," Ironhide corrected. "Alpha Trion provided the mass. Like a reborn." His craggy features belonged on a stone mountain, they were so severe. "Or a monster."

"For Primus' sake," said Prowl. "It's a computer. Stop talking about it like it's the slagging Matrix."

Prowl did not often swear, and the silence that followed was cathartic. As was his way, Prowl was the last to agree, but once he did, was committed.

"Prime, he said, "Leave it to me. I've still got some connections to Bluestreak, my mass-brother. We'll pull out the histories and run an analysis."

This was the reason he had kept Prowl on as his Second, even after all they had been through. Prime nodded, and allowed them leave. The two Temple guardians assigned to watch Prime watched the departure of Prime's soldiers with hesitation, nervous at the strange language and the evidence of plotting.

Later that megacycle Elita came to pay her respects. She stepped into Prime's chambers as if she were still Queen Oracle, as if she was an equal to the Priests themselves. She had been in and out of Prime's company every few time-cycles since his arrival. Only once had a Temple guardian tried to stop her, and had been impaled on her long claw for his temerity.

"I hear you called on a prisoner from the dungeons. I never knew you had such a specific taste." Her words might have been teasing, but she smelt desperate. Her false visions of Primes and God Soldiers had ruined her, stripped the rank from her, cast her out of her home.

"So now you hear rumours, Oracle?"

"I like to confirm rumours. I think my usual sources found the idea so outlandish that they didn't want to come to me straight away."

Prime took her anthro hand. "Is he all right? I didn't want to let him go back to the dungeons, but I'm practically powerless here."

Elita let Prime stay on tenterhooks for a few seconds, then nodded. "He is Prime consort, remember? The prison pit is full of Autobot loyalists. I hear that him and Emirate Xaaron have struck up a friendship. So yes."

Prime sat back. "He's still in danger."

"That too."

"We need to get him out. He's certain that this planet's salvation lies in getting Cybertron rotating again."

Elita frowned, shook her head. "Even if we established rotation, there's no infrastructure left on the shadow-side. The photons will fall upon a wasteland. What are _you_ trying get out of this?"

"I'm trying to buy some time. I think he's onto something."

The Oracle was still uncertain. "You understand, Optimus, such revelations are the provinces of Oracles, or incept-mechs generating new sparks. Not ordinary mechs."

"I believe him, Elita."

"You believe him? That he holds the key to our survival, and not just trying to establish his own?" There was a fierce elation in her patchwork face. She knew the answer, wanted him to say it, prove her visions right. A part of Prime didn't want to speak. Generations of Primes had tried to force their lives to match her visions, when it was not at all how prophecy worked.

"I believe him."

"And I hear you have taken him to your berth?"

"Elita, that was accidental, we're not together again..."

She snickered her mantis-claw against the gash of her mouth-plates. "This is a great vindication for me. A great vindication." A hideous smile. "I have friends who know the dungeon keepers. They will make sure he is safe."

"Thank you Elita."

She looked at him imperiously. "Oh, don't you go thinking it's all for your benefit Prime. I am not some mad sightless Oracle. I will regain my rank as Elita Zero, and you can be assured you will find your solution."

"And what is the solution?" Her generalizations and double-talk annoyed him. "If your Oracular talents have returned then you can give me a slagging clue."

She frowned at him. "Optimus my dear, I don't know the content, only the result. That's for you to find out."

* * *

The Blind Ones were grumpily silent as they polished him down again. He was rimed with silvermass, and for the first time Starscream was pleased that the stuff was so tricky to get off. He knew they could smell Prime on him, and there was a distinct colour attached to an overload made in joy than one taken by rote and duty.

_Looks like he knew what he was doing, that Optimus._ Redolent and satisfied, Starscream lay back in the frame and let his memory replay the sweetest touches.

Definitely, he thought, if he ever had to take the route of the Warlord and be harsh and terrible as Megatron had been, if the Temple was indeed crushed under the weight of the Decepticon Army, he would have Optimus installed in a berthchamber, have him pleasure Starscream at Starscream's every whim. He would make the Autobot leader crawl before him and beg for a taste of his protoflesh. If he felt generous, he might allow it. Just a taste, mind. Prime's mouth could be a brutal weapon. It could disarm him, make Starscream the captive. He would have to be firm with Prime, teach him his place.

A Blind One tutted, sensing Starscream's arousal.

_But you can tell him to do all those things now, reminded _his inner voice. _Prime will do everything at your command._

Starscream smiled to himself, his hidden delight. For all that he was a leader, there was always a streak of wanton selfishness in him. He was all that was good and bad in his kind, and was not ashamed of either.

He was taken back into the dungeon pit.

Maybe they had been forewarned. Or they could sense the percolation of his cyberemones. Or maybe it was the way he moved, a mech who knew his place in society, beloved above all by a Prime.

The prisoners parted when he entered. He was handed a slab of energon, more pink than brown.

Xaaron shuffled up to him. "You may still require my help."

In one darkened corner, a flash of red. Overdrive had decided not to join the neutrals, the non-combative Autobots, and instead remained with a brace of Autobot soldiers. Their memories of the war, and their hatred of all things Decepticon was a divide that would never be crossed.

"Why do you not join them, Xaaron?" asked Starscream.

"I was not always an Autobot. Once, I was Cybertronian."

Starscream waited until the others had been dispersed by cagey guards before turning to the old mech. "Can I trust you with something, Xaaron?"

The former Emirate nodded.

"Prime will be sending his people to access Vector Sigma."

Xaaron was quiet, but his optics searched Starscream's face for deceit, or even insanity. "They do this? To what end?"

"Sigma is an old computer, I've heard. Intellect trapped within hardware, the truest of mechs. It would have memories. Knowledge. Cybertron is not yet dying, old mech."

Wincing as much as his frozen facial pavements would allow him, Xaaron said, "Forgive me Starscream, please understand. My emotions to that end are raw. Alpha Trion utilised Vector Sigma to create his creature, that accursed Alpha Duex."

"Trion? The Thaumaturge who remade Prime? What happened to him?"

Xaaron shrugged. "Joined the mad prophets of the Dead End, who knows? Even by Optimus' making he was not altogether sane. He kept thinking he was remaking Duex, and even I knew that didn't suggest a good outcome."

His armour plates rattled. Down in the pits a pair of gladiators began a new battle. In their energon hunger, the desultory clangs and wallops of contact were slow. Starscream broke his gifted energon in half and gave the larger piece to Xaaron.

"Surprising that he survived, then."

"Very surprising. Some insiders even tried to kill the new Prime. I pardoned them during their subsequent trials. Reinstated them. The councillors thought me crazy, but I knew that the attempt was out of fear, the fear that we were breeding a monstrosity."

"Who were these traitors?" asked Starscream. Normally he would have cared little for Autobot politics, but strangely it mattered very much that Optimus had been in danger.

"The medic. Ratchet. His sergeant, Ironhide."

"But they are his friends."

"Think of it. A traumatized Matrix and the body of...well, a pit-mech who had only know the uncouth barbarities of the bluecake docks, all being grown to challenge Megatron?"

Starscream remembered all too well what he had seen in the Temple Proper. "It was no pit mech you used. I've been in the Temple, Xaaron. You used a clone of Nemesis Prime."

"Such an individual was unlikely to be anything less than a force of terror."

"But _them_."

"Prime's capacity for good overwhelms the darkness in him. Most times."

Starscream remembered the first time he had seen Prime battling Megatron. Saw Megatron being struck down again and again by the grotesque strength of the Autobot Leader. Starscream's fear and disgust had been palpable then, almost erotic in its severity. Megatron's Second at the time had been a big ugly Insect-Mech. Infest. In an attempt to assist Megatron, Infest had been stupid enough to blunder into the Prime's way. Infest's head had been torn from his shoulders. The shock of it. Deep in Battle Lust, Starscream had climaxed.

Xaaron laughed to himself. "That force of terror has a great attraction for you."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Your colourscent changes every time you think of him. You were at Jazz and Prowl's bonding, were you not?" Xaaron nodded for Starscream. "I always wondered why Optimus was not reluctant to allow Jazz to bond with Prowl. They were close mechs. But during the ceremony I noticed that he was nothing less than happy for them." Low look, "Suggesting to me that he had found an equally important lover."

Starscream shrugged. "He is a Prime. He could have anyone of his choosing."

"Yes, but we are not like you Decepticons with your emotionless pairings. And it is not so easy for a Prime."

Their conversation was interrupted by coarse yelling. Clearly one of the combatants had scored a kill-shot. Over the stink of dirty mech-bodies, a ranker, more exciting smell of spilt massblood.

"The fight is over. We will be assigned cells. You should stay close to me, Starscream."

* * *

Finding Vector Sigma was not impossible. Difficult, yes, but there were memories and myths engraved into a Cybertronian psyche, shadowed in memory cores. The device occupied twin distinctions depending on whichever religion one followed. It was either the computer that generated the first sentient mech-life, or it was Primus' brain.

"Or like the blank architecture of Primus' brain," Jazz said. It's not sentient in and of itself. Neither theory is proved."

Prowl looked sideways at his bonded then down at the data-pad Bluestreak had given him. He was never comfortable speaking on religious or anthropological matters. He was more suited to stripping down a plasma cannon or explaining a battle strategy than he was in deconstructing Autobot culture.

The pneumatic transports, the deep elevators into Iacon's demersal core ended at the slave trails, the long acid-drenched conduits that made up the lowest mapped levels of the city. Here the borrowed data-pad did not show bright detailed colours, but dotted lines, shaded areas with question-sigils denoting uncertainty.

Prowl was cautious. He wouldn't let Jazz step out of the elevator until he had scanned the ribbed nave of the tunnel.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing, Jazz? This could be dangerous."

"I used to go down here often, remember? When I first came to Iacon."

"Hmm, what I do remember is having to explain to your commanding officers why their junior soldier kept going AWOL in the acid drains."

"Maybe things might not have turned out as they did, if I hadn't," said Jazz slyly, his hand running the length of Prowl's forearm.

The warning hiss of the pneumatic tube's net arrival ruined the moment, throwing Ironhide out. Ironhide stumbled in the knee-deep water, leaving behind a cloud of red colour-nanites in the liquid.

"Careful, this is wicked water," said Jazz. "The acidity isn't enough to etch metal, but your nanite layers aren't going to like it."

"I'm going to melt myself down to stumps," grumbled Ironhide. "If it wasn't for Prime's orders-"

"Suggestion, 'Hide," corrected Jazz. "He never said you had to."

"_Suggestion,_, which is good as much as an order anyway, coming from him, I wouldn't be here."

The vertical tubes had all but petered out at this level. It was time to continue their search on foot. Jazz led the way down a right-angled transept, past hastily welded columns and hissing valves leaking rust. His dark-sight was better than most, he could lift his visor and peer into the deepest conduits.

Prowl scowled at the data-pad every few microcyles. Footfalls echoed down the unmeasured lengths of the trails, hit a bend or an obstruction, , came back to them an octave lower by the Doppler effect. More than once they would be startled by the far-off sound of heavy footfalls and drew their weapons, until they realised it was only their own echoes.

Long strands of metal-webs hung from the obscured ceiling, as if the darkness had wept tears. Ironhide picked up a discarded, rusted bar and brushed aside a fall of web. They whisked over the corroded surface.

He repeated the action with force, swinging the bar into the webs. As gentle as air, the webs sliced through the bar and the falling pieces sounded like an overseer's punishment-song.

"No-Spark, Hell, dammit," he muttered. "Keep it slow."

"This place..." murmured Prowl. "Can you imagine being a slave, trying to escape from the Temple?"

"Forced slowness, danger in the darkness?" said Jazz back, "Prowl, this is a bound-mech's' natural habitat. Most of them came from the shadow-side, like me. They would have been at an advantage here."

"Let's assume I don't want to know what's been making these webs," said Prowl gruffly. "I've seen what a turbo-fox can do to a mech on the surface."

They moved deep into Cybertron, sliding through downward slanted aisles, long ladders into deep pits, the occasional geared platforms that lowered through dank fog and into vaulted temples, old as Primon himself.

Every so often they would find the remains of a transport system. Twice they were lucky, as the pneumatic pressure still held for a bumpy downward ride, saving them several day-cycles of walking. The third time the transport had been sabotaged from below during a long ago battle. Empty shell casing littered the hexagon pavements. Radium fuel canisters still glowed down misleading transepts.

"Must have been a hard battle," said Jazz.

Prowl unwound a carbon-fibre cable from his hardpack, threw it into the whistling void.

Not ready to be shown up by his two younger companions, Ironhide snapped himself into the mechanical descender and abseiled down the shaft at just under terminal velocity. Prowl and Jazz followed him, and their journey continued.

After a day-cycle, Ironhide pulled out the energon from his shell-bag, passed it around. Prowl frowned at his not-quite-refined piece and ate it under protest. Perhaps he had grown soft living in the Temple, and living on Earth, but he still appreciated decent energon.

"We should make camp," said Jazz. "Recharge. We'll be wasting energon if we keep pushing ourselves like this."

"Are you sure? I don't particularly want to be gallivanting down in the pits for much longer if I can help it," said Ironhide. "That's a young mech's business."

"You're hardly as old as Kup, and here is good enough. See, a ledge to keep us out of the acid.""

Ironhide boosted himself onto a pipe-track. No sooner had he settled in, he started to burr in recharge.

"Looks like the old guy was really tired," said Jazz.

Prowl slung an arm around Jazz. He stroked Jazz's chest, smiled at his bonded. "Once we're back up top, I'm going to set a whole day aside. You and me, we'll head out to the Iacon Mezzanine, spend some time at the solar collectors."

"Mmm that would be nice." Then his smile faded. "They're being used for food production now, I heard. Nobody's allowed near them."

"I mean, when all this is over."

"You think it will be?"

"Prime seems to think so."

Jazz leant into Prowl. Prowl could feel the concern in him. "Prime has always managed to pull success out of the most damning failures. Sometimes I used to think he really was charmed, that Primus had his back. But when I think about the refugee camps, the squalor, I fear that Primus has deserted us."

Prowl held Jazz tighter. Whenever Jazz was distressed he would turn to his religion. It was not quite the same as the ritualism and ceremony of the Temple. Primus was a living and powerful force among the shadow-side mechs. He wanted to say something, reassure Jazz that it was not the case.

But the truth was, to do that meant that he had to lie.

* * *

They drifted into recharge, and when their reservoirs were as charged as possible, Prowl nudged the others awake.

Ironhide looked at his greying feet and muttered human language curses so colourful Prowl hoped he never repeated them on Earth.

Despite Ironhide's growing discontent, Prowl had to admit to himself that he did not mind this unexpected journey. The task reminded him of the recon sorties he used to run as a young mech in the Golden Age when Nemesis Prime had given over his reign to Nova, when the Autobots ruled over Cybertron, and the Decepticons were only a faction of disgruntled workers. They were the days of his youth, that first exciting and tremulous moments with Jazz, the days when Prime had shrugged off the chains of the priests and taken up the role as leader. Terrible days fraught with fear, but exciting and wondrous days nevertheless.

Not this decline. Suddenly Prowl found himself missing Earth, wanting to be somewhere where he wasn't reminded of the end of his species all the time.

"We're heading to the last of the downward tunnels," said Jazz after a final descent through old cybergeological strata. "Then, who knows? According to the Slave Apocrypha, these were the last bastions of No-Spark cult in all of Cybertron." He leant in close. "They worshipped Unicron, the Death Bringer."

"That's kind of morbid," chided Ironhide. "Did you know these sinkholes were called Unicron's Wounds? They're supposed to be remnants of Primus' battle."

Jazz nodded. "On the shadow-side, the Pit is called-"

Prowl coughed, interrupting him. He'd heard that particular story more than once. "Let's just say that we've come close to where the old records say Vector Sigma is located."

"Better have a terminal," said Ironhide. "Or a real friendly virtual interface."

"Must have done," said Jazz, "If Trion was able to sexually reproduce with the thing."

Prowl checked his data-pad once more, pressed his mouthparts together. "There's an obstruction up ahead. Keep sharp."

"The Gilgamech circuits all speak of Vector Sigma being directly below the Towers. Alpha Duex couldn't make it back down here. It's how Prima got out of Iacon, when the Temple was invaded. Time to put the data-pad away. We're in uncharted territory now."

"You better be accessing all your memory circuits lover because..."

He never finished his sentence. The ground opened up beneath him. His processors overclocked. A half second felt like a hundred. In that space he was suspended above a chasm, darker than any conduit. It was hungry. Gravity embraced him and yanked him _down_.

All he was certain of was the rapidly departing screams above, his name yelled over and over again. "Prowl, Prowl, _PROWL!_

* * *

__

A dream of falling was interrupted by Xaaron's hand on his shoulder.

"Listen Starscream, _listen._"

They did not share the same internal binary codes. They could not communicate in silence. But there was enough information in the bodies, their optics, their cyberemones.

Rescue?

Perhaps.

"We need to be out of here." Starscream was on his feet and helped Xaaron up. It was fortunate that he was not a very big mech, otherwise dragging him around would have been a problem.

By the time they made it to the pit arena, it was less of a rescue and more of a riot. Staccato light flared out across the levels, followed by the acrid taste of plasma-fire. Prisoners were running the length of the arena carrying the dead and dying bodies of guards. Flame bursts and electrical arcs lit up the grisly scene.

Starscream looked up. The normally flaccid pipes were extended. The valve-seats glowed.

"This is no rescue," growled Starscream. "This is an execution stage."

"How right you are."

Overdrive's human language was good, but given the chance to learn it all Autobots spoke it well. A lilting, perfect human voice attached to a scarred mech, ruined by disappointment and trial. He stood in front of Starscream, and in his arms the bludgeon had been replaced with a photon rifle.

"Overdrive, we are all in this together."

A tiny globule of fire fell in front of Starscream's face, just missed his chest and landed, sizzling, between his feet. Beyond the walls the pressurised pipes began to sing from the influx of liquid metal, a cacophony of whistles and screams.

"Straxus...don't you understand? They're going to flood this place," shouted Starscream above the din. "They're going to kill us all!"

The rifle's sight levelled with Starscream's eyes. "Then I'll want to make sure-"

The lights in Overdrive's optics flickered out. He dropped to his knees and stayed there, like a demolished building. Behind him, Skids stood with the bludgeon.

"That works," said Starscream.

"It was either him or you." Skid's voice was barely audible. He'd just killed a friend to save an enemy.

If there was anything more Skids needed to say, it was put aside, for another spot of molten metal caught him on the hand. He dropped the bludgeon with a shout.

"Skids," cried Xaaron, "you used to be a prison guard before the coup. Is there a way out of here?"

Skids stutter-blinked, dumb as a throttle-bot. "Out of here? There's only up."

"What?"

"Up," repeated Skids, "we have to be up! Everything is raised and lowered through the roof."

Starscream slapped his head. "In case you haven't noticed, Autobot, _there is no way up there_! No ladders, no chains, nothing!"

"You can fly."

"Stupid mech! What are you, an Insect, able to survive on rust? I haven't eaten enough energon to fly."

Skids' face was a rictus of condemnation. "So he took you to his berth and didn't feed you."

Starscream took the comment hard. "There's not enough slagging food!" he yelled in English. "The whole planet is starving!"

Over their heads, a valve seam burst from a minor pipe. The metal poured down in a single column. What once was lit by discontinuous blue light was now bathed in a dull orange glow.

Skids raised his hand to his chest. "I won the last pit-fight round," he said, panting in the heat. "I still have energy in my reservoir."

"Rust it," growled Starscream. There was no time to argue and moralise. He tore open his chest. He'd done this before. With Optimus. He'd taken another mech's energy and used it for himself. It had nearly killed them both.

Hang on," said Starscream, hooking a hand into Xaaron's armour. The Emirate clutched him, hard. He looked into the blue mech's optics and cursed his sudden need to reward the one who had saved him. "You fall, you're on your own."

"I'm ready!"

With a cry, Skids threw himself into Starscream's embrace. Their sparks jumped the air barrier. Strength flowed through Starscream like a supernova's expansion. The thrusters at his feet ignited. The energy drained as if his reservoir had been sliced open with a photon blast.

Roaring, he gripped the two Autobots and threw all his strength into takeoff, just as the pipes vomited fire and sick, hot slag. The tide of molten metal splashed up, scoring an arm, a leg. Starscream was straining too hard to feel. It was Skids who screamed.

Below, a hundred mechs cried out, prisoner and guard alike, a single, harsh and terrible note. Skids began to slide into unconsciousness and slip, Starscream was forced to snag him, hold him close.

Waves of heat buffeted them from below. Barely his length again a small catwalk circumscribed the upper section of the holding tank. Barely his reach again. It could have been as far away as the sun, for all he could reach it. He threw all his remaining energy into his thrusters, felt the last shreds of awareness fall from Skids.

"_Primus, damn you!_"

As if the entreaty had worked, or if it was just the shock of calling for another race's god, his thrusters one final cough before shorting out. One cough, and he sailed up past the catwalk rails, hit a pinnacle and fell.

He snatched out with his free hand, and dangled from the catwalk with two dead weights attached to him.

He was stuck. Skids had somehow wedged his spark casing into Starscream's. If the Autobot fell, the entire unit might be pulled out with it. Xaaron was not much help. Unlike Elita, or a dozen other Elder 'bots of his age, Xaaron had never replaced his metaskeleton, He was inflexible as a lump of lead, and barely able to hold his own weight.

"I can't hold on..." moaned Xaaron.

"Hold on. If I can get Skids to wake, he can climb up..."

But Skids was drained. A remorseless, drowning despair came over Starscream. It was not just the weight of his passengers. It was the tormented howling from below, as the last of the mechs began to sink into the

"You must let me go."

"No!"

The Emirate's golden eyes were filled with a strange light. He almost seemed young, for a moment, the glow from the smelter giving his face movement.

"Starscream, stay with Optimus. He needs you more than you know."

Xaaron smiled, sad and knowing, before releasing his grip.

Starscream knew he had yelled. Xaaron's name, or a Decepticon negation. It was all the same. The golden body splayed out in cruciform. The long descent into the molten sea. The heat waves registers in jewelled spectrums, the light inside a spark.

Then he was gone.

There would always be consequences of such a great one's death. Skids jerked in Starscream's arm. "Wha...? We sa...?

"Quit moving," Starscream snapped. "You're caught on my spark."

But Skids was insensible, and Starscream was trapped. The metal pool was rising in the reservoir with alarming speed. Starscream's strength had never been in his upper body, and there was no secondary power to draw from. He could not swing on his arm like a pendulum, not with Skids attached.

He could taste his impending death.

The catwalk shook. The heat was loosening the bolts on holding the structure in place. It could not hold the combined weight of Starscream and Skids, nor the smaller mech that had just stepped out onto the gangway to join them.

"Want some help, friend?"

Starscream stared into a beautiful Decepticon face, not so different from his.

"Solarstar?"

* * *

tbc


	41. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Nine'

Forty-one: Deus Ex Machina (Part Nine)

* * *

Someone had been fooling around with the fight program since last Prime had used it. It had once been his own personal baseline to have the three holographic attackers come at him at once, and then to fight them off in less time than it took to finish a meal.

Now they seemed a touch too fast, worked too closely together. Instead of his normal dance, he was belting away with both sword arms like a threshing machine. The normal forms that guaranteed a blade strike, a parry, did not meet their mark.

When the last hologram was defeated Prime sat back with exhaustion.

"It's not the program, you know."

Prime retracted his sword arms. Prion tucked his hands under his sleeves. His black Thaumaturge's gown was rusted at the seams.

"I'm not old yet, Prion."

The priest shrugged. "No, but the bad energon makes you old before your time. Did you notice how quick those holograms were? We're starting to slow down. Entropy is coming. Soon we will all freeze into inertness."

"Are you going to preach No-Spark end-times to me now?"

Prion shrugged again. "Shall I just make a list of observations instead?"

They were interrupted by a clatter of voices. The Temple guards were arguing with a mech who was not about to be denied entry.

Prime saw Bluestreak's familiar silhouette against the door-frame. The Autobot soldier had shared both mass and incept parent with Prowl. Their forms were similar. Their voices not. Bluestreak shouted, "If you don't get your rusted hands off me, you see this gun? You see it? It's going _in_ you!"

Easy," said Prime, approaching. "It's not like you to get so upset, Blue."

"No? I've just received word from Jazz. Prowl's gone."

"Explain."

"They were in the deep levels, heading for the Vector Sigma terminal. There was some...corrosion to the floor, some tectonic movement since the levels were last mapped. Prowl fell through the floor. They can't raise him through internal-comms or-" He took a deep intake of air, "Bond links."

Prime controlled the reflexive touch to his chest. _He's not dead. The Matrix feels him._

"How are the others?"

Bluestreak shook his head, "While they were making the call, it cut out. Something's happened to him too." It all came out in a rush. Bluestreak panted. "I needed to tell you this now, because there's something else. Meridian has-"

"Meridian, what?"

They turned towards the sneering voice. Emirate Meridian stepped into the practice room, lips pursed with distaste. Fighting was a symbol of low rank, of baseness. A high-ranking mech would never do what cannon fodder could do for him. A pair of harried assistants followed him, carrying the obscenely rich ends of his cloak so it was not dirtied by the plain gold floor.

"Meridian has something to tell you." Bluestreak could not quite keep the loathing out of his voice. Clearly he had prostituted his ideals in becoming a loyalist to Meridian, and he hated himself for it.

"A matter of grave importance," said Meridian with faux sadness. "Concerning the dungeon."

Prime could feel the sword-mass moving under his forearms, ready to transform into blades.

"I've only just been advised of an unrest. A riot? An escape attempt, perhaps?"

At first he felt a vaulting joy. "There was an escape?"

"An attempt. It was quelled, but sadly-" Meridian was alight with triumph. "Every mech in that place was drowned in molten steel."

Bluestreak made a noise behind Prime. Prime did not move.

"Are you not upset, Prime? Your consort was among them, as well as, unfortunately, the previous Emirate Xaaron."

Prion gasped and put his hand on his spark. "It's true!"

Meridian looked at Prime, waiting for him to react, waiting for him to do something, give them reason to put him into restraints, so that the Matrix could be taken from him.

"Prime?"

"Three times," said Prime slowly. "Three times Starscream has been taken from me. You believe that a fourth will succeed?"

A twitch in Meridian's cheek betrayed him. The room stunk with hate.

"Don't you listen to your beloved priest? He is dead, Prime, as very soon you will be."

The Emirate Pretender turned on his heel, fouling himself up in his own robes. Shrieking curses, he kicked his grovelling assistants and headed out the door, shoving aside the guard who was too slow to raise his spear.

"Oh Primus," said Bluestreak, "everything's going wrong. So many bad things have happened." He made the sign of the No-Spark on his chest, a movement that made Prion raise an eyebrow ridge in wry surprise.

"Bluestreak," Prime's attention did not leave Meridian's departing figure. "Send a search team to meet up with Jazz and the others. And bring me the Oracle."

* * *

He had been there, when Nova Prime had died at the hands of Megatron, that last great battle that seemed to herald the end of their age. He had been there when Megatron had faced off Nova Prime, Megatron the colour of bleached organic bone, and sky-coloured Nova, the most beautiful mech Prowl had ever seen, standing to his full height, a proud Prime.

And a dead Prime.

_Why does a Prime never fight? Why do Autobots follow weak leaders?_

Megatron's words seemed to resonate with the massed soldiers. Yes, why?

Nova Prime had tried. He really had. He was Prime-big, and had a weight advantage. But little else. All the delicate frills and lengths of metal at his shoulders, all the glorious attachments of Primacy only served to get in the way. Megatron had struck him aside as easily as swatting a scraplet.

Nova had screamed in defiance, even as Megatron beat him to silver-pulp. For all that Nova was, he was still a Prime. His mass-parent had been the terrible Nemesis Prime, the only Autobot leader to ever truly keep the Decepticon menace down.

Megatron stopped beating him short of death, and then began to systematically strip away Nova's exoskeleton.

Prowl had seen what was happening. Prowl had not been able to save Nova. But he could save the Matrix.

"Get the body! Get Nova!" he'd shouted to his frightened warriors. Shell-shocked, they had ignored him, and he had run in himself, howling the Autobot battle-cry.

Running into Megatron had been like running into a wall.

No, it was more than that. It was like falling from a great height onto this floor, like every part of him had shattered into pieces. He had little memory in what happened after. Bought time, so in Megatron's distraction Nova's consort had flown in from Primus-knew-where and snatched the body away.

The sound Prowl made now was like a whispered echo of a battle-cry. He was too much of a soldier to stay down for long. No matter his injuries, he had to get onto his feet.

He had fallen hard on his shoulder. A quick diagnostic routine confirmed the worst. His exoskeleton was shattered from elbow to neck, and the connective tissue had no purchase on the shifting structure. One wing drooped.

The pain came like the leading wave of an explosion. It was so huge, he could see no end to it.

_Get up, Prowl. Get your slagging body up._

Vertical, his crisis-management systems kicked in. He could comprehend the injury now, where it hurt, how he had to hold himself. Jaw clenched, he gripped his arm and slid it along his side until the armour locked in to his flank. It was not a brace, but without the med kit he would have to do.

Jazz's screams still echoed in his audios. He sent out a widecast call, informing them of his location - guessed - and his situation - slightly wounded, nothing major.

Nothing came back. Further investigation proved a worrying theory - something in those far walls was stopping him from sending a message out.

He knew he could yell, but he could not hear Jazz or any of the others calling from above. Prowl was not reckless. He was badly injured in hostile territory. The worst he could do would be to draw more attention to himself.

A soft light, almost on the outer edges of ultra-violet, daubed the far end of this chamber. Prowl pushed light nanites into his optics. The ribs and support beams of his new location sprung into definition. Esoteric markings had been chiselled into one wall. A makeshift altar was placed in a corner, the discarded housing of an engine. _A No-Spark Temple._

Prowl shivered, half from pain, half from superstition. Besides, there was reason enough not to linger here, in the dark. He needed to get to the source of the light, and find a way to communicate with the others.

As he approached, he felt his spark thrum with a strange harmonic. Discordant music in subsonic, a tune that cold not be a mere natural occurrence.

With trepidation he stepped into the next chamber, stepped through a curtain of titanium filaments. Stepped into hard light, looked up, and almost forgot about his broken arm.

His first thought was, _they're keeping a ship down here._

His second thought was a retraction. The titanium columns were beyond huge, they were astonishingly so. He had emerged onto a gangway around the central column of a hyperspace drive. A heavy filament mist obscured the length of the drive, but he was certain it measured in kilometres.

No ship possessed photon-drives this size, Prowl reminded himself. Not even the Admiralty ore transports of the shadow-side. He had to be seeing something else.

As wary as if he were defusing a bomb, Prowl leant over the gangway's barrier, inspected one curved surface. He reached out a hand. His sensitive fingers felt interlocking plates, a bloom of colour-nanites.

_Protoflesh?_

"Who disturbs me?"

Prowl leapt away from the massively grouped columns and snapped out his weapon. "Who is that?"

Something came out of the shadows of the gangway. Reflected against a curtain of steam, the figure took on terrible proportions. Prowl's hand tightened on the trigger.

Then it stepped through, and he was still big. As tall as Optimus, a mech..._with no face_.

"What are you?" shouted Prowl, too wracked with pain to be polite. "What is this place?"

As if an invisible hand had reached out, his weapon was torn from him. Another one smacked up against his injured side so that he collided, groaning, with the wall.

"I am caretaker of this place, and you are interloper."

The accent was harsh, even in the poetic and musical tones of high Autobot. Almost a touch of Alpha about it.

Prowl still had enough of Jazz's residual spark memories to make the connection, gasp, "You're old Cybertronian!"

The pressure was gone. The faceless mech approached. Where a head should have been was a wedge, and a central optic that glowed bright gold. His colour-nanites were dark purple, the old God Soldier colour.

"I am Cybertronian. I am Caretaker of Cybertron, answerable only to Primon."

Prowl wondered if the faceless mech was throttled. He spoke in such a curiously staccato way.

"My name is Prowl. I'm second in command to Prime."

"Prowl? Primon has no second in command. He rules absolutely."

Prowl felt his mouth tightening. This was going to be awkward.

"Listen, caretaker, you're speaking an Autobot Dialect, which means you must have known about Prima, his reproduction."

The caretaker did not reply.

"Primon has been gone a long time." He wished he could have said it easier, but as a soldier he was not used to mincing words. "Prima came after him. Then there was Alpha Prime, Omega, Guardian Prime, Vector, Nemesis, who was the Prime of my incept date, Nova..." he counted each one off on his fingers before this silent creature. "An Autophage placeholder we called Sentinel. And Optimus, who is the Prime of our age."

The dark shoulders tensed, then slumped. "So long. So many Primes."

"What shall I call you? You have a designation?"

The caretaker said a word in old Cybertronian, almost unpronounceable. In Alpha it might mean the percussive force that precedes a release of energy.

"Shockwave."

Prowl stood up straighter. Injury aside, he had been given a task, and intended to complete it.

"You asked me why I was here. I've come to find Vector Sigma."

Shockwave pulled back with a hiss.

Prowl stepped forward. "I'm not here to cause trouble. Cybertron is dying. The Decepticon wars have destroyed our infrastructure. Cybertron starves."

"I know of Decepticons." Shockwave nodded. "One came to me, once."

"Then you know there are a great many, and none of them can be trusted."

His words made the faceless mech hang his head. "He was bigger than me, the colour of ashes. He told me Primon had sent him. He was not repulsed by me. He took me to his berth, put his mass inside me..."

Prowl rolled his optics. Megatron had been here, had seduced this poor, stupid and lonely mech with words and bodysex, and Shockwave had blurted out the realities of Vector Sigma like some love-starved Senator in a Dead End protoflesh pit.

"...informed him that Cybertron cannot be controlled without the Matrix. He never returned," Shockwave finished piteously.

"His name was Megatron," said Prowl. "Obviously since you couldn't give him what he wanted, he left you to rot down here."

Shockwave didn't reply, but the air sizzled with fractured electrons. Prowl covered his eyes, a Jazz-gesture.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been cruel. It's just that I'm hungry and in pain, and it's making me say things I shouldn't."

"No, it is making you tell the truth. Come with me. I have a medical station."

Though Prowl was naturally uncertain with strangers, it was time to be bold like his bonded and follow Shockwave out of the drive-room, or whatever this place was. Shockwave lead him through a series of ever-decreasing rooms. Each one of them was filled with the mechanica and technology of a long-passed age, an age of elegance and refinement, not of war.

When Shockwave took him into what he termed was his medical room, Prowl only stared. Around the berth, what looked like an artistic jumble of gears was actually the med-bot, an automaton wrought in silver filigree, whorls and patterns of organic complexity.

"Lie back. He will take care of you."

"How sentient is it?"

"Like a sparkchild," said Shockwave. "Or a turbo-fox."

Despite the age of the machine, it made quick work on Prowl's armour, a hundred little graspers pulling his shoulder into place, and welding them into some semblance of rigidity.

"The pain will fade in time."

Prowl nodded. A soldier knew the landscape of pain.

"Now, I will show you what you have come for. I will take you to Vector Sigma."

In measured increments Prowl stood up. He was pleased with the way his arm, although stiff and sore, had regained much of its movement. He could balance himself if he ran, or even hold a weapon if he had one.

Shockwave padded off on his strangely insectine limbs. He was definitely of the old Cybertronian mould, but there was enough of the Insect Aspect about him that suggested he was not of the Elders, not pure mech.

"It may also be of interest to you," said Shockwave, "the two other interlopers who were making noise in the exhaust bay."

"What? Where?"

Shockwave made a careless gesture towards a row of steel doors, each displaying a text from the Gilgamech Codex. Only one was shut.

"They were less patient than you on explaining their arrival."

Prowl limped for the ad-hoc prison, an isolation cell for a No-Spark prospect. When he opened the door, the two captives complained bitterly, holding their hands to their optics.

"Jazz...!"

Jazz stumbled into Prowl's arm's, but the embrace was a cover. Jazz hissed, "Where the No-Spark are we? And why aren't my internal-comms working? Who is that ugly mech? And why does my spark vibrate so..."

"Wait," said Prowl. "We've found it. Sigma."

Ironhide joined them.

"Are you certain you can trust it?" said Ironhide, pointing his chin at the departing Shockwave. "A lot of crash bang, into the brig for you, no questions allowed."

"He fixed my arm. He could easily have torn it off. No, I don't trust him, but I know he's been down here too long to be anything other than a Cybertronian."

Shockwave had reached the long end of this No-Spark Cathedral, and Prowl was ready for another great wonder to be revealed. He would not have been surprised if a switch was thrown and the entire superstructure transform around them to reveal the massive architecture of the fabled Vector Sigma, the central processor of Cybertron, the spark itself.

Instead Shockwave stood next to a small cube of ironstone. On its surface, a small monitor, installed after the fact. Bio-wire and drill-holes marred the otherwise smooth surface.

"This is Vector Sigma."

Ironhide was the only one bold enough to touch the monitor, then he turned back to Prowl with a shrug. "It's just a Teletraan-type terminal. Not working, either."

So this is what true disappointment felt like. Prowl exchanged glances with the others. "Now I understand why Megatron was upset."

Shockwave started, almost in apology, "Vector Sigma has been off line since..."

"Since Alpha Trion came here, trying to couple with the darned machine." Ironhide finished for him.

"Not couple," said Shockwave. "And not a machine. To regrow Primus from his protoflesh."

"That's the darndest thing I've ever heard," Ironhide grumbled in English.

Prowl snapped his fingers. "I knew it. I thought I felt protoflesh on the drives. This whole section is covered in colour-nanites and protoflesh. Vector isn't just a computer. It's a living thing, like us."

Jazz laughed into his fist. "That's _some_ size difference. It would be worse than me trying my luck with an Omega Guardian."

"Shush now," said Prowl, "we have to be serious." He returned to High Autobot dialect. "Shockwave, you are saying that he tried to regrow Primus from this...protoflesh thing? But only Alpha Duex was incepted?"

"The religion speaks of Primus in terms of godhood," said Shockwave. But they forget that Primus was of the same race as Unicron, and fought him as an equal."

Arms folded, Prowl pondered on this discovery. "So we have come here for nothing. No information on how to save Cybertron, no great revelation."

"We still need to tell Optimus," said Jazz.

"Tell him what? That Vector Sigma is a giant dead mech curled up under the city? That the legend of the all-knowing computer is just that?"

"He needs to know this." Jazz was gentle. He understood that Prowl's emotions ran deep. He then turned to Shockwave.

"We need to return to the surface, and quickly. Is there a way out of here?"

Shockwave looked at them all, his facelessness almost pathetic, his single eye unable to express what this sudden intrusion meant. Had he welcomed it? Had it just reminded him of what he could never have?

"There is a way up. A transport as far as the servant Underhalls to the Celestial Temple. I trust that it is still there."

"It is," said Prowl.

Shockwave gave a nod, and began to lope back down the nave of the cathedral, the rest following in silence.

* * *

TBC


	42. Deus Ex Machina 'Part Ten

Forty-two: Deus Ex Machina (Part Ten)

* * *

"Elita, I can only think of one person other than me who has a vested interest in keeping Starscream alive."

"Oh, I don't know," said Elita. "Jazz seemed quite fond of him."

It was a waste of energy, but Prime had paced the perimeter of his rooms anyway, waiting for Elita to come to him.

Since his announcement Meridian had made all the obvious public overtures of an Emirate mourning the death of a Prime Consort, sent him gifts and baubles - pilfered from Xaaron's personal treasury, Prime noted with distaste - and a pair of whores from his own harem.

Once he had made certain they weren't spies, and merely Meridian playing psychological games, Prime dismissed the whores. "You'd better go," he'd said.

Neither moved. "We'll be beaten," said one, optics swimming with terror. "Our rations cut."

Prime had slammed the door shut on the guard that had brought them. He made the pair, one blue and one green - Meridian's colours - sit in the library alcove.

"And keep quiet," he said. The relieved look on their faces told him all he needed to about how they much preferred that, than being sent to his berth. They'd feared coupling with him. Prime only acknowledged their fear with a tired nod. What he had accepted in his lovers before Starscream he now could not bear. Even the ones that sold their bodies couldn't even look at him without an undercurrent of alarm.

"I'm not going to touch the pair of you. I'll tell Meridian you were acceptable."

Now they watched as Prime argued with the equally intimidating Elita One. She leered at the whores. "My Optimus doesn't waste time, does he?"

"Don't test my patience, Oracle." Prime took hold of her arm and pulled her away. "Recovering your lost rank requires him to be alive."

She folded her arm in transformation so that he was left gripping nothing.

"And requires him to keep enjoying your company, Optimus. A Decepticon wild-thing doesn't do very well in captivity, as you've already found out."

"Where is he?"

She expelled air, made an exasperated noise.

"He's being kept with Chromia and the others in the Underhalls. The guards are too busy with the masses that have gathered in Iacon's streets to be bothered with us servants."

"Take me to him," his voice was low but his intent was clear. "I want to see my..." Stopped. Was going to say consort. Maybe even bonded. But Starscream didn't belong to him, no more than Cybertron did. "I want to see him."

"And more." She touched his chest.

"You presume too much."

"I can see Meridian being only too pleased to let you out of your rooms. Poking around in the Underhalls when the refuse of a dying planet are pressing against our very walls? He would not see the slightest problem, would not even deign to be suspicious."

Prime walked away in disgust. "You all conspire to keep me here! I am no longer a monstrous sparkchild, walled up until you are ready to sacrifice me on the battlefield!" He strode to one of the whores, picked the green one up by its arm. It gave a squeak of dread. "You see how they look at me?"

They were old wounds that he spoke of, and Elita's face softened. She was one of the few who knew what Prime meant.

"Dear Optimus," she said in soft Alpha. "I am only saying we should be realistic, and careful. I know you wish to see him again."

She moved to the door, and before leaving turned about. "The Underhalls have a marvellous selection of courtesans, some who can be acquired for your particular tastes. I will see that one fitting your particular tastes is brought to you."

Prime was sick of the waiting. There were odd noises drifting in through the vents. His sensitivity to Cybertron seemed tinged with madness.

"What's happening?" he asked a guard, catching him during a shift change-over.

The replacement was skittish, like an Autophage pulled off its dreaming-trail. "The refugees have breached the Temple's outer walls. They are rioting in the gardens." His violet-robed shoulders sagged. "I'm not supposed to be telling you this."

The two whores, whose names he decided to ask in a fit of edgy boredom, were ordered to read aloud from the books in the library. They - Wingspan and Pounce - had been Decepticons with Beast ancestry, so their Autobot accents were clear and lyrical.

"So what made you choose this line of work?" asked Prime after a cleverly sung vocal poem in a tritone. "Apart from living in the Temple rather than starving on the streets."

"There are some thing we are _very_ good at," said blue Pounce, until he realised who he was talking to and dipped his optics, clearly cursing his Decepticon egotism and hoping Prime wouldn't ask them for a demonstration. Wingspan give his brother a hard nudge.

"Good grief, just read me another story. One of the Gilgamech ones."

Halfway through the ballad of Alpha Prime and number five hundred and twenty-three of his Thousand Consorts, there came a knock on the blast doors. "Prime?" Nervous voice of the guard, wondering why he was spending so much time in silence, and not wanting interrupt him if he was sporting with the courtesans. He would have known well enough the painful censure of a Senator who had been interrupted during intercourse. He imagined it worse with a Prime.

"What is it?"

"A request for an audience..."

Prime glared at the two whores. They froze over the book's cellulose pages, Wingspan holding a page mid-turn. "Get out." Didn't mean to be harsh, but Starscream, even the thought of him, made him lose control.

The whores wasted no time in removing themselves and clattering across the marble floor. The guard looked at them from the doorway, looked at Prime, steeled himself for a dressing down.

"Your soldiers..."

He was boosted aside by Ironhide. The whores ducked under his arms, escaped down the corridor.

"Keeping busy?" asked Ironhide. The pair had not lost the shadows of their Decepticon markings, the hot crimson optics.

"Always," said Prime, wondering how he could be disappointed and elated at the same time. "Gifts from Meridian. Seeing as I'm mourning all of you now. Seeing as it's the end of the world."

"Yeah, I can hear it too."

Ironhide stood aside and let Prowl and Jazz through. Prime waved the Temple guard away, told him to shut the door.

"Bluestreak told me you'd been in an accident down there. I expected the worst."

Prowl pointed at his arm.

"So...you found it?"

He did not miss the way his soldiers exchanged low glances with each other, and knew that when Jazz started speaking it was bad news. Since the beginning Jazz always had to bring the difficult information to Prime.

"The good news is, we found Vector Sigma. The bad news is..."

"And the bad news? It has to be bad, else you wouldn't be the one nominated to tell me."

Jazz let the air out of his vents. "We found Vector Sigma. All of it. Not a terminal, not an interface."

"Talk to me."

Ironhide pushed forward. "It's just a big Cybertronian mech. Like an Omega Guardian, except a whole lot bigger."

Concerned, Prime turned to Prowl, seeking confirmation.

Prowl nodded. "It must be in alt-mode. I saw hyperdrive columns down there, huge. But they were armour and protoflesh, not bare metal."

"Like a turbo-fox larvae in the centre of a mech. Or a worm at an apple's core. You get my drift," finished Jazz.

Prime threw up his hands. "So where does that leave us?"

"It leaves us with knowing there's no super computer under the city, no great answer to our problems, hyperdrive rockets to nowhere..."

Prime frowned, was about to speak, when the door rattled again. The frightened guard was back.

"What is it?" yelled Prime.

"Uh. Lord Prime, sir, there's another pair of companions to replace the other two."

"Tell them to..." he started, before he realised just what the guard was trying to say.

"Bring them in."

Elita had timed her entry well. She knew which of the Temple guards were young and inexperienced, had perhaps not sparkshared enough so he did not know who was welcome, and who was not. The hapless guard was shut out once more and Starscream unspooled himself from the magenta robes and wirework that had disguised his shape.

"Blast all this lurking about. I've been beaten up, bunt, starved, and spent a recharge cycle in the Underhalls, which is an experience I could happily erase from my memory."

"Good to see you too, Starscream," said Prime.

Starscream sniffed and gave an imperious look to Prowl and Ironhide. They regarded him with cool optics. Only Jazz let his emotions show.

"Hey Cherry Vanilla," said Jazz, stroked Starscream's wing, gave him a playful nuzzle-kiss on his jaw, despite Starscream's scowl and smiled at both Prowl and Prime's anguished looks.

"He'll kill me if I do any more," Jazz faux-whispered. "It's good to have you back." Smile broadened, "You tell him if he doesn't treat you right, you come to me." A wink. "I can always extend the bond to a trine."

Prime pretended to appreciate the attempt at lifting the mood, but the truth was he was almost sick with trepidation. His relationship with Starscream was going to be changed, and he could feel the approach like an Oracle could.

Prowl put an arm around Jazz's waist, not too happy with his flirtatious mate.

"All right, time we were leaving. We'd better let Bluestreak and the others know we're survived our recon mission before they start sending out a Rescue Party. Prime, we will speak later." He glared at him. "_On. Earth."_

"Yes," said Prime absently. His optics were tracking Starscream as he headed for the library, poked around at the bookshelf.

Elita sat on one of the day berths. "So, your search party found Vector Sigma."

"Found a corpse," said Prime. "Mech parts of a primitive size." He noticed Starscream snap a book shut, watch him with a focused intensity.

Elita sighed. "Go that far back into our history, and there were not so many differences between us and our creator."

"Did you know that they would find this? Did you _know?_"

She shook her head, then shrugged. Maybe. Maybe not. Elita rarely looked defeated, even when she had been, even when she had been cast out of the Temple for losing her vision. Always proud and resolute. Never exhausted and small, as if her great age had caught up with her.

"The Primes would interact with Vector Sigma through the Matrix. We were never told how."

"Because the line ended with Nova, the knowledge died with him."

A nod, her mantis limb across her chest as if she held the remains of a dying sparkchild.

"Elita, thank you for bringing Starscream to me."

"He cannot stay. There will be a change of guards soon. They may be the last shift to ever hold authority in this Temple. They will know who he is and punish him. In their minds he was the one who brought about Cybertron's fall. You cannot hide him here."

Prime exchanged a look with Starscream. The precipice of an existence without him fell out on all sides.

Almost imperceptibly, Starscream nodded.

"I will stay," said Starscream. "I have done all I can."

Prime wanted to tell him no, wanted to tell him to save himself. But a terrible certainty overcame him. If he let Starscream go now, he would never see him again.

"Thank you Elita," said Prime. "I want you to know you have always been my friend."

Elita stared at him, and covered her face rather than let Prime see her fall apart. She fled the room.

Now they were alone, at last, after all that had happened.

Starscream tipped up his head. "I can hear them, out there. Hunger has stripped the sentience from them. Like a termite mound in the desert." He levelled his sight at Prime. "I saw a mech being eaten alive by turbo-foxes once. At the time I thought that was the worst way to die."

Any other time, any other mech, and Prime would have told them not to talk that way, told them that there was a way out.

Here, at their world's end he had no more platitudes to give.

"Starscream."

"Optimus."

There were no more words. They came together with indecent urgency, Starscream's mouth was hungry for his kisses, for his taste, and Prime nuzzled and sang into Starscream, dizzy with longing and relief, his vibrato song and his hard mouth at his enemy-lover's lips, his interstices, in the open seams of his pelvis, leaving Starscream breathless.

"Oh Primus, oh Star, I'll never leave you again."

Then Prime fell over Starscream's body, pushed apart Starscream's knees without asking permission, so clumsy and graceless in his desperate search for entry.

Starscream welcomed him with eager arms, dense protoflesh. Shouted triumphant curses, how good it was to have Prime inside him, have Prime be so aroused by him, how pleasing his body was and even, though Prime hardly believed it, how no other mech had ever satisfied him so. They fucked as if it really were the first and last time they'd ever experienced each other, brutality and tenderness combined.

Starscream reached up. He gripped the back of Prime's neck, hard. The coming storm was stripping away the layers that had hidden each from the other. "When you are inside me, Primus is inside me," he said.

"I love you." Spoken in English, the only shared language they knew.

Starscream overloaded with a sob, and Prime followed, awestruck by these universal machinations, the way the great engines of fate had brought Starscream back to him, now, when all hope was lost.

At last Prime reluctantly disengaged from the throb and press of Starscream's body. He could not bear to break contact, his hands on Starscream's frame, his mouth tracing each armour seam.

"I've never met a mech so crazy for bodysex," laughed Starscream between breaths.

"No. For you."

"Foolish Autobot."

Prime lifted his head. "You'd prefer I wasn't?"

"Give me the last of that white energon and let us discuss how we're going to save our planet."

Disbelieving, Prime passed over the last gel. "Starscream, you never know hen to give up, do you?"

Prime was met with an odd look. "Megatron used to say that to me all the time."

There was an awful silence, Megatron's name hanging between them. Even in the ever increasing buzz from beyond the walls Megatron's legacy foxed its way from voice to voice, from cry to cry.

"Just what Elita would have told you. I think she already suspected what we would find."

"Big Cybertronian, in alt-mode stasis."

"Yes."

"You've not sparkshared with Blitzwing? For more information?"

"No. He wasn't crazy enough to stay in the Temple. Anyhow, he exhausted all he could back on Titan. The deep memories won't make much sense to him. Cybertron was different back then."

Starscream's mood was darkening. "Perhaps I should have opened my spark to you."

"No, you were brave enough just coming back."

"You've always wanted it from me."

Prime traced the outline of Starscream's wing, remembering how small they had been in his hands, back on the Ark. Now it was a deep regret, that he had not been there to see them grow to full size, to witness that final transformation. He wanted to kiss them, had to restrain himself.

"I have been a friend to a great many Cybertronians, and a sparklover to more than a few. It's a different kind of love. Cyberspiritual. Generous. Before you - my body was only ever used in war, and violence. I never believed it could be anything else. You gave me that." Strange, that he felt so vulnerable, saying this now. "For a while, I thought that knowledge only hurt me." He paused, and in the silence suggested that he'd matured into his armour flesh, understood what it meant to long for another in ways that weren't in conflict.

Starscream propped himself on his elbow, serious optics meeting Prime's. "I think you are more like Blitzwing than you realise."

"Except Blitzwing's alters can talk to each other." A small sadness came over him. "Only one part of me was truly important to you, kept bringing you back. The others have only gotten in the way."

"Optimus," said Starscream, put out. Maybe Prime was too close to the truth. They had always meshed physically, there was no escaping Starscream's need for Prime's body, even when there was nothing but hate in the rest.

With his free hand Starscream pulled open Prime's chest-plates. For a moment Prime wondered if Starscream would sparkshare at last, but instead he reached behind Prime's spark. Did it without being forced or told. The shock of being touched by something that wasn't hooked steel made him gasp. Gently, Starscream peeled away one of the Matrix lamina. The Matrix coiled about Starscream's hand, alien information burring through Prime like a data storm.

"You cannot communicate with it?"

"No," groaned Prime. Terrible memories were waking in him, all those moments of the forks, the times he was told he was less than the creature that lived and fed off him, the monster within a monster. Hated thing, bringer of shame and pain. In Starscream's hands his body liquefied in gold-tinged ecstasy.

Starscream brought his mouth to the Matrix and teased a petiole before taking the laminae into his mouth. Prime jerked, cried out, a long guttural keen.

He almost pushed Starscream away.

"But you can feel what it feels?" Starscream began to pay attention to the Matrix's other arm, pulling it from behind Prime's spark, his touches leaving Prime gasping. Any moment now the doors of the berthchamber would fly open and they would witness an atrocity, the sacred Matrix, untouched and inviolate, being licked and caressed by a Decepticon, enemy, spoil, _whore_ and Prime didn't care.

"Yes, I can feel it," sobbed Prime, and he writhed under Starscream's touches, Starscream's mouth on the Matrix him, him, (Primus it was him) and he felt everything tenfold, thrashed and wept, and he spent silver, his thighs streaked with his own spill, too insensible to even open his own armour.

Starscream pulled open Prime's pelvic plates, allowing his mass to flower out of him in barbed fractals. He couldn't move. Starscream straddled him, urgent and lustful.

"Sweet Straxus," Starscream was saying, his words punctuated with gasps, "I'll never explain how good this feels, Straxus Primus, _god_...ah!"

Drawn by the absence of space, he flowed into Starscream, the very tide of his massbody drawn into his enemy. Starscream rode him _a cheval_, while the Matrix stranded between his fingers, was kissed and suckled, spoilt, degraded, such terrible and wonderful feelings, and Prime lay back defenceless.

When it happened, Prime couldn't comprehend the immensity of the experience. It was as if his chest had _pulsed_ and carved in on itself, and for a second he was abandoned to panic, a frightening paralysis.

Then the pleasure came.

He had to distance himself. Had to set himself apart from his psyche. In all his memory, nothing was like this. Nothing. The only thing that came close was the first time Starscream had mass shared with him, coupled with the first true spark-overload Elita had shown him. But they were merely signposts. He couldn't even vocalize.

Needed to distance. Needed to put nit in another place, like he did with the forks.

"Optimus?" Starscream was saying. "Optimus?"

_I'm scared._

Whispering encouragement, Starscream bent down, wrapped his arms around as much of Prime's torso as he could. Matrix and spark and open chest made him messy. Stayed there until the terror was over and he could move again.

Small steps back up the ladder of consciousness. His mass had retracted. Could scent-taste Starscream not having overloaded, which meant that whatever had happened was for him alone.

"Now that," said Starscream with a wry grin, "is what I call proving a hypothesis.

"What...?"

"The Matrix is sentient, and it's also you." With unusual tenderness he pushed the flaccid limbs of their god back into the depression.

"I didn't. But I could feel..."

"Yes," said Starscream. "The pair of you aren't just two beings inhabiting them same body. This is a discovery of note." Even in this alarming situation Starscream couldn't help trying to puzzle it out. "I think you were lied to."

Prime shook his head, not comprehending.

"You told me once, that you were devalued by your priests because you couldn't talk to the Matrix. But maybe it was the other way around. I think they didn't want you and _him_ to be talking."

"But if I don't talk to the Matrix, then why have a Prime at all?"

"You knew something they wanted you to forget, maybe."

"I doubt it means much now."

"No. I guess not."

Starscream got up and headed for the private wash racks adjoining Prime's rooms. Prime stepped up and followed him. They stood together under the spray.

Prime held Starscream close, kissed him in silence, in reverence. The walls were thin, here. Crystal panes in the top tiers of the stone reflected chemical firelight, stoneburners working on the last of the Temple's defences. Cybertron had slipped behind the slowest and laziest of its moons. In darkness the rioters would come for them.

"There was a time I would like to have been bonded with you on Earth. Like Prowl and Jazz." Starscream said, little more than a murmur. "Made love to you on the sentinel-ledge on an evening when the sky is the same as Vos during an electrical storm. Are those foolish things to have wished for?"

"No," said Prime, and his voice was thick with regret and sadness. He picked up Starscream and carried him to his berth. Once there, Starscream pushed him away.

"Lie back," said Starscream, hard tones of an order in his words. But not so in the mouth and his hands which journeyed over Prime's body, exploring the taste of him, his colourscent, the roadmap of his responses across his armoured flanks, the long path on his inner thigh, his pelvic armour, which Starscream would not allow him to open. Felt the way he took up space in the physical world.

It startled him, those gentle sensations on heavy dermal plating only experienced to cuts and blows. Prime tilted his head back, gripped the golden weave of the berth cover, panted and moaned with each caress. His colour-nanites were so tender to pressure and touch that he halfway imagined that Starscream would make him overload by tongue and fingers alone.

"I'd almost forgotten how responsive you are," said Starscream, utterly pleased. Wicked smile, then he mouthed a node in the centre of Prime's abdomen, a small depression between armour plates where the dermis was thin. The exploration made Prime jump and gasp. "Such a waste, putting you on the battlefield," said between licks. "The most prized of all pleasure-mechs are not wired up so fine as this."

"Star..." Prime reached for him.

"Lie back, stop it. Don't we have until the end of the world?"

Raw with vulnerability, Prime let Starscream attend to him. He was unused to being graced like this. It pleased him to give, to be allowed to love, but to beloved so in return? He shivered as Starscream moved his burning mouth over the silver-spangled ridge between his legs, moaned again, and his hand trembled across his chest. He wanted to touch himself there.

The Matrix woke up, started thumping and scraping inside him like a prisoner might run a cup along the bars of his cell. Before Prime could stop it, it worked out how to unfasten Prime's chest, and darted for Starscream's hand.

"Enough, you annoying thing," muttered Starscream, trying to free his hand without hurting Prime. Every time he pushed the Matrix back behind Prime's spark the tenticular _handles_ wrapped about Starscream's wrist, coiled up his arm, demanded more touches, yearned for him. Prime couldn't stifle his cries.

"Oh, he wants your mouth, he wants you..."

"Tell him Optimus, it's my turn now."

"He's so demanding."

"Yes, and when he overloads your mass retracts and I'm left wanting," said Starscream. "He can wait until I'm finished."

"He's our god. You can't tell him what to do."

Sly smile. "Pity he's not between your legs, then he could work for it, for a change."

Silence. What Starscream had just said was more than profanity. Prime was aware of the hitch in his own respiration, organic stutter in his circuits. The Matrix yearned.

Starscream smiled.

Between the three of them, Prime had to be the one keeping a clear head. "You mustn't speak of such a thing."

"Mustn't I?"

"No," almost a breath, "no, it's forbidden, the Matrix must not..." and here he was pleading with a Decepticon who had in all his life ignored pleas and shouts for mercy, who had gloated over Autobots of the highest rank as he had killed them, who had had been so relentless that none of their spies had ever seen him up close because they had died before doing so. Prime said, _no_ even as his body turned into a battleground, and he opened his chest pieces wider, the Matrix uncoiling to full size with verminous haste.

Maybe Starscream realized he had made a mistake. Maybe he hesitated, the first gleams of fear in his optics. But he did not change his mind, pressed Prime's shoulders down until the Matrix found the open core of protoflesh.

A sea-anemone kiss, and Prime's head fell upon golden glass, one hand seeking purchase on the curved lines of Starscream's thigh, giving himself over to his parasite, letting it go where it wanted. If Starscream had wanted to tease the Matrix into erotic play, it was having none of it, the pistils snapping firm around Starscream's thighs, the tepals stabbing and nuzzling at protoflesh.

Ferocious sensation jagged into Prime, alien organo-data, Prime clung to Starscream as his parasite stabbed into Star's massflesh with almost vindictive selfishness, yet Starscream did not recoil from him, endured what had to be awful and terrible, worse than the first time they'd mass shared. He slung a leg over Prime's shoulder, eased his hips up to give Prime and the Matrix better access. Prime could taste Star through each hard thrust of the Matrix, crimson-tainted pain and harsh colours.

Prime could feel another Matrix-overload looming. He was not ready to process it yet, not so soon, not within the parameters of this act. Sobbing with effort Prime pulled out of Starscream, the Matrix fighting him all the way.

With the last of the Matrix elements free, Starscream drew his knees up and let out a shuddered breath.

"Primus, Star, did he hurt you? I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." Ignoring the discomfort, Prime stuffed the Matrix back into its depression and shut his chest pieces in mortified shame.

"Yes," said Starscream, exhausted. "Are you there Optimus? My sight is blurred...feel so strange."

"Star?" Prime reached out, pressed his hand onto Starscream's shoulder, afraid to do too much more. The temperature gradients were different, the connective tissues under the armour slack and warm. The Matrix had drugged Star, made him docile, like an insect predator might drug its prey.

"Oh Optimus..." Starscream turned towards Prime, drunken lazy smile across his face. "Is that you?" His hands moved over his body, lewd and lustful. "Everything feels so..."

Prime grabbed one hand. "Starscream, I think you've been poisoned."

"Have I?" His tongue swept across his upper lip, tasting the air. Starscream's hands moved between his legs, gold-splashed from Matrix lubricant. "Optimus...I can still feel you inside..."

"This isn't you talking," he said in alarm, and Starscream smiled in wanton wickedness, stopped Prime's words with a kiss. His thighs wrapped about Prime's hips, and Prime couldn't stop himself from opening his armour, sick and aroused at once.

"Optimus, I need you now."

Beside himself with concern Prime released his mass into Starscream's body, carefully pushed into the wincing space, almost too worried to feel pleasure. Starscream's hand brushed his golden chest lazily.

"You want to see it, Optimus, you want to look at my spark?"

_No. Not with you like this._

Oh Primus god, yes.

With shaking fingers, Prime opened Starscream's chest. Crimson facets flashed. Both spark and Matrix jumped inside him.

Murmured voice, "Does this please you, Optimus?"

"Yes, oh yes," he breathed, ghosting his fingers over the spark's surface, feeling the segue of biometal into protoflesh, the cybermechanics of crystalline integration. Every spark was unique, Starscream's no exception. Prime had a memory of Carly saying to Wheeljack, "Neo-Victorian with tribal and techorganic influences," and Wheeljack being puzzled. All Prime could say was, "Beautiful."

Prime did not reach for his chest straight away. Holding his own desire in check, Prime pushed into Starscream a few more times, brought him to that giddy insensibility before overload, then opened his chest.

Sensing importance, the Matrix only settled into a whorl around Prime's spark, as a hand might offer an ember.

Starscream let out a sound that sounded almost like a twin to the final man he had given, back in his missile-silo prison, back before his wings were torn from him. Softer, but still a final sound, ready for pain. He irised his spark casing open and pressed the crimson node into Prime's blue, and Prime bucked as a wave of memory flooded around him, raw and hurting.

The intensity of the conjoined sparks made Prime's elbows shudder. Careful, careful he pushed the upper layers of sense aside, opened up his own memory cores and let Starscream investigate with his own free will.

Starscream pulled back, not ready to know, not wanting to know. Prime surrounded him, guided him in.

The Ark, and Starscream so hurt. Wings gone, eyes gone. _I disgusted you._

No, beautiful, beautiful.

Starscream saw himself through Prime's memories, torn and shredded, and yet, most amazing of all, objectified by erotic longing. Not pity. No, not this dangerous enemy. Shamefully Prime let Starscream into the pathetic fantasies he'd had, of taking him to his berth, blind and wingless, but so very, very desirable. Fantasies where he mouthed and kissed the tender scars on Starscream's back until Starscream cried out from sheer sensitivity. At the moment of delight, Prime would press his mass into Starscream from behind, mount him in the forbidden Warrior position. Across the bond he could hear Starscream murmur with delight.

_Is that really what you wanted to do when you looked at me?_

Yes. I'm so sorry, it was wrong, I should have been respectful to you.

How should anyone be aroused by such a wrecked, beaten up mech? It had been Starscream's beauty that had attracted Optimus initially. But an injured Starscream, appealed to darker and more lustful desires. Starscream's ego always had been powerful. Now the Decepticon in him was gleeful at watching even the most depraved of those unrealities, scenarios like Starscream binding Prime to the berth and using his body in punishment. Starscream using Prime's mass, Prime's mouth, Starscream blinded, wrecked, demanding the basest of bodysexual immoralities of his prisoner, and Prime giving in, guilt and love and lust combined.

This secret he unveiled to Starscream, and Starscream consumed them eagerly.

_-I never knew you had such an imagination._

-You bring out the worst in me.

-If it had happened...we might have been too busy fucking for me to think about growing my wings back, came Starscream's bold reply, _so perhaps it was good that we waited_.

In this present, Prime pushed his mass into Starscream, and Starscream yelped with startled pleasure. Star's erotic response had always been more delicate, more refined. He vocalized on receiving the bodyblow of sensation that was Prime's experience of him. Prime hissed between clenched jaws as he received Star's sensory knowledge, exquisite gratification, the afterburn of his own mass.

"Let me in, and I'll let you overload," Prime gasped.

"_Let_ me overload?" Starscream canted himself into Prime's pelvis, difficult, being locked in and pressed to the berth. The teasing was pretend. Starscream was scared.

"Please."

A second's hesitation. Almost too much to ask of someone virgin to sparksharing. But they did not have world enough or time. Each moment was precious.

"Yes," said Starscream and Prime fell into his lover's mind. He knew he should go somewhere pleasing for him, a shared moment in berth, or maybe Starscream on his own, reaching Mach 5 across the ocean, the waters parting before him.

And yet, there were still things unresolved. A question that Prime had been unable to ask.

_You're in the Temple now, you've taken Mirage and Arcane hostage._

Prime felt Starscream move restlessly beneath him.

_He comes through the molten door, Prime who you have not seen since that night on the sentinel-ledge. He ignores you, heads straight for Blitzwing and smacks the gun out of his hands. He picks Blitzwing up by his neck and shouts, "Where is he? Where is he?_

Fear and exhaustion and confusion. The room is so hot. He frightens you. The power of him, the molten metal scoring off his shoulders and thighs in rivers of silver, tracing his frame in heat. You know for certain there are two individuals called Prime. You know this. One tried to kill you. The other was a voice in the darkness, the one who said you were beautiful. Which one is this? Which one?

I'm sorry.

You raise the gun, and your memories all converge on the sentinel-ledge, that peak moment of humiliation. You pull the trigger. The kickback is enough to shatter an arm, if one was unprepared. You take your hostages and run. Blitzwing is behind you saying, "You killed him, you killed him!"

Starscream began to struggle, throwing up mental blocks and diversions. He'd realised where Prime was going. But Prime wanted to see this through. It was the time where their relationship had taken a turn for the worse, and not because Prime was there, not because of words he'd said. It had just happened, out of control, like so many misfortunes in his life. He knocked aside all Starscream's flimsy walls and went deeper...

_Now you're waiting for some blast doors to open. You've spoken to Prime over the intercom. He's alive. You've decided to cut ties. You tell him Mirage was right, that you never loved him. You keep trying to feed the crematorium flames of your relationship, reduce it down to ashes, so there won't be a possibility of weakness. The hand cannot sin if it is gone from you._

It startles you to see his reaction. Unusual, that this should concern him now. You think - the ties are cut. He cannot love a mech who shot him. It is over.

In a way, it's a relief.

And yet you keep thinking of him. You can't stop. Your erotic response has always been like a runaway chemical reaction when it came to him. You debase yourself. You order your friend to fuck you so you can imagine that it's him inside you. How can you hate something and love something at the same time? It tears you apart.

Suddenly your memory is jolted forward again. The Temple Proper, those long dark halls. There are mechs in stasis, some that look exactly like Prime...

"What?" exclaimed Prime, snapped into the real world by the revelation.

_Exactly like him._

Arcane cries, "Nemesis Prime. They are his children."

And finally you're in the Temple Proper, holy of holies, the place only ever seen by the Ur-Thaumaturge. You're looking for a weapon, for the thing that will kill Megatron once and for all. The Thaumaturge you've brought with you babbles nonsense, falls before an icon. A cradle protruding from a plinth like a clawed and desperate hand reaching from the Kokular smelting pits.

The prist keeps vomiting words. "...wanted the Matrix here, wanted it in the Temple, restore this planet to life. This goes deep. So deep. Into Cybertron's centre, it's spark-heart..."

You have no appreciation for the sacred. You take a closer look. The cradle holds liquid, and you taste it.

That taste.

You know that taste. How often have you pressed your mouth into his mouth. How often have you tongued armour sticky with his armour, his lubricant?

His taste.

They'd reached a trip-wire, a node of heightened emotion. Impossible not to overload, really, but even as Starscream's chest pulsed, the pleasure was obligatory. In some ways sparksharing could be artificial. A skilled lover could bring overload whether one wanted to or not.

"Straxus," snapped Starscream, still defiant despite his post-overload weariness. "Why do you see anything in that act? I admit it was good at first but then...Straxus."

Prime unhitched his spark himself and withdrew his mass, conscious that he had not overloaded himself, that he had plundered Starscream's memories like an interrogator. The thought of having messed up again made the desire drain out of him.

"I'm always stepping wrong," Prime was despondent. "And to think I'm supposed to be good at sparksharing." A sideways look. "The only one thing I'm good at, other than fighting."

Starscream sat up, and he examined Prime's face like a cryptologist trying to decipher a new language.

"Was it really so important for you to see that time? Was it not enough for you to know that it was resolved and put behind me?"

"Is it resolved?"

"I came here, didn't I?"

Prime tipped his head. Despair etched hard lines between his facial pavements. The dark army had reached the walls. Individual cries could be made out from the beehive roar.

"Knowing what waits for us would make anyone do irrational things."

"Do I look irrational, panicked?" Cool stare, steady words. "I'm not here because I am a captive, or because I have to be," he touched Prime's face. "But because I would not rather be in any other place in the entire world."

They were words he had wanted to hear from Starscream for so long. Half-weeping in a dizzy, elated joy Prime took Starscream's chin in his hand and caught him up in a kiss.

"Mmm," said Starscream, and his tongue flickered against Prime's own "mm, mmh...oh _Primus_..."

He pulled away, optics wide.

"Star?"

"It tasted of you."

"What...?"

Something big hit the Temple's retaining wall, and the lights juddered in their holders.

"Time differentials," said Prime. "Only the big ore loaders use them, to break up planets."

He moved to rise, but Starscream grabbed his hands. "This was the thing I was trying to remember. The icon tasted like you. But it was small, big enough to hold-"

Starscream raised his hands to Prime's chest, said, "It was where they intended to put the Matrix."

Prime was silent. There was fire in the upper windows, in the dome.

"When Arcane was babbling, I thought he was being an Autobot, speaking their spiritual nonsense, saving the planet, all that slag."

Prime found himself repeating, "Going deep. Restoring the planet's sparkheart."

"We al thought it was religious cant and ritual. But he was speaking literally."

"To make that sacrifice..." breathed Prime, until Starscream hit him in the arm, shutting him up.

"Foolish Autobot. The priests bred you to think only about killing yourself for the greater good. You don't have to separate yourself from the Matrix. You use the Matrix to speak with the planet."

"But I can't speak..." He stopped again. The Matrix was tapping the inside of his chest. He felt its desire for Starscream in a steady thread of data. It had gone willingly into protoflesh. Would it go into something equally important?

There was no time to speak. The dome shattered open, showered the berth-room with crystal shards. A container the size of a metal fist followed, bouncing off the edge of the berth and rolling across the marble floor.

"_Time grenade!_"

Prime hauled Starscream off the berth and they bolted for the blast doors, just managing to shut them on the entropic shimmer that burst from the grenade's seams.

Starscream helped lock the blast doors and turned to Prime in alarm. "This won't hold them long. They lob another grenade and we're _finished_."

"We need get to the Temple Proper." Prime pulled up his battle mask.

"I hate to be the one to say it, but we don't have a priest around to get us access," Starscream might not have been panicked before, but the reality of the time grenade buzzing and frizzing beyond their metal barricade made him short tempered. "Unless you feel game enough to run over to the Celestial Pavilions and look for one who's decided to stay and fight."

"I can get into the Temple. Maybe even to the final door."

A up-in-the-air microsecond where they looked at one another, and realising that neither had spoken.

There was no disguising that cracked-electron smell, the fluxing of spacetime. When Mirage appeared, he was a wreck, blast scars and shatterwebs in his armour. He favoured one leg. Massblood stained his pale Alpha cheek.

"How long have you been there?"

Mirage looked at them both, was going to answer, then stopped. "Long enough. You need to get into the Temple?"

Prime was about to snap something sharp, about Mirage not knowing when he was not welcome, but it was Starscream who stepped forward.

"You told me once that you could open any door in Iacon. Because you were an Alpha."

"That is still correct."

Starscream grabbed Prime's arm. "We can do this. He'll let us into the Temple and..." He looked Prime up and down. "You'll do what it is you're meant to do."

* * *

TBC


	43. Deus Ex Machina 'Final'

Forty-three: Deus Ex Machina (Final)

* * *

They escaped into the corridor, locking the blast doors behind them. Mirage beat out a reply as they cleared and proceeded through the empty hallways.

"Prowl and Jazz were waiting at the private space bridge. Prowl said you were supposed go through. When I heard that they'd left Starscream in the Prime berthchambers...I knew you would not." Mirage turned to Starscream. "You'd never leave Cybertron. And Optimus is too hung on you to think clearly." This could have been said in malice, but Mirage was wry. They'd proven him right.

"Why risk yourself? You didn't need to come back."

"I'm an Autobot. My duty is to my planet and my Prime."

Prime took Mirage's shoulder in fealty.

"Anyway," continued Mirage, "I don't intend getting stuck here. The Alpha Council approved my bonding to Hound. I wouldn't let them out of their chambers unless they said yes."

They waited until some suspicious footsteps had passed, before moving to the pneumatic transports. As if the Celestial Temple was merely an extension of Mirage, the doors were open as they approached. Only inside, sealed off from the outside world did their doubts pile up.

"What are you going to do when you get there? Are you going to put the Matrix into the vessel?" Mirage looked at Prime intently, making Prime wonder how much he had seen.

"That's the plan."

"And then what?"

It was as if they were getting irradiated by time displacement grenades. Prime couldn't think of what would happen. Would he die? Would he be given knowledge? Or even worse, would he happen upon a great revelatory understanding, a life-changing insight on the very precipice of the world's end, only to have it taken from him?

Prime stroked the side of Starscream's hand, and Starscream pressed back. He regretted not having internal-comms that could access Decepticon, wanted to tell him so much.

The Transports opened up at the inner doors of the Temple. Only Mirage was startled by the stone coolness. Starscream had been here before, and Prime was unnerved by memories.

"Have I been here before?" he whispered, knowing that his recently recruited Alpha soldier and his even more recent lover would not even know.

"This way," said Starscream, and neither Autobot questioned why the Decepticon was leading them.

They half jogged down the long aisle, acutely aware of conserving energy. Prime glanced up at the stasis chambers, like so many poly-crystal sarcophagi. The blank, frozen faces of mechs looked down at him. Not all were dead.

He knew what to expect from Starscream's sparkmemories, but it did not lessen the emotional impact of seeing it himself. The large, pale mech with the hole in his chest. His own body in another's, though the face was different, older, harder and maybe ever-so-slightly cruel.

"Senator Oberon..." He half-looked at the other stasis-imprisoned clones, terrified that if he saw them directly he'd damage himself. _Nemesis Prime's sparkchildren..._

Starscream pulled Prime away from it. "Don't get caught up in the slagging mysteries of this place."

Feeling as if he'd just been headshot Prime let Starscream bring him back into a run, like an angry sergeant pushing a reluctant recruit.

"Did you know about this, Mirage?" asked Prime. "These clones? Alphas have many secrets."

Mirage was nervous. "There was a rumour that Nemesis intended for himself to be cloned for the next generation of Prime I didn't know he had succeeded."

"But Nova was the next Prime."

Mirage's jaw worked in agitation, as if he were trying to stop the words from coming out. "Certain steps were taken. Nemesis was the Dark Prime. But he was still Prime. That's all I know."

Starscream, who had remained silent while the Autobots slowed to a walk. "Quiet," he hissed. "Up ahead."

The portcullis into the Temple Proper was lit by a scatter of bio-globes. They sparkled as a shadow passed before them.

"I'll go first," said Prime.

"No," said Starscream and Mirage together. Sharp looks - they were not yet ready to become anything more than allies - before Mirage winked into invisibility.

Prime insheathed his sword arm. He could taste the heat of his own blade, feel the energy race up his arm.

"Who's there? Show yourself."

The cowled figure stepped before the portcullis. The cowl fell away.

"Talix!"

The Matrix knew that name, It retracted back so hard into it's depression the inertia was like a punch in the spark case.

"Don't come near this place, Optimus."

In anyone else, his first name was spoken in intimacy and companionship. Not so Talix, who had dropped the _Prime_ out of disrespect.

"Talix, whatever has happened in the past between us, it is insignificant now. We have to save Cybertron."

"Cybertron is already saved."

Prime wondered if the madness outside had already infected Talix.

"Cybertron has become corrupt," Talix continued. "The mechs of the shadow side have abandoned their place in the Celestial Machine. Decepticon whores lie with our Leaders." His nostril-pieces flared, sucking up the atmosphere as if he were feeding from the bedlam at the Temple walls. "Now we will be cleansed by entropy and heat death. The superfluous automatons outside will die within a cycle and we will rebuild a new world from the ashes..."

"You rusted-"

There was no time to stop Starscream from hurling himself at Talix. Before Prime could cry out in warning, Talix pulled a plasma-rifle from his robes. The light spat out, hit Starscream in the thorax, sent him crashing to the floor like a broken thing.

"No closer!" shouted Talix, raising the plasma cannon, aiming at Prime's head. "The Matrix belongs in its rightful place, in the Temple Proper. You, however, are as superfluous as the foul scrap procured to keep the Matrix alive."

"You kill me, the Matrix dies," said Prime. The part of him still screaming was held in check by a cold, savage anger. "The Matrix cannot speak to the planet alone."

"Speak to the planet?" spat Talix, a hideous half-laugh as if he were amused by Prime's naiveté. "Have you been talking to Prion too long? Believing in the silly tales written on the walls by drunken artisans? No, the surviving masses will worship a Temple and an Order. Not an uncontrollable, degraded individual." He raised the rifle, "Now say your farewells to Primus-"

Talix stopped, mid-speech, as the plasma-canon ripped itself free and made a long curving arc through empty air, before connecting with the side of his head.

A dull crack, and it was torn free of his shoulders.

Massblood spurted from the neck cavity. The cranium rolled in front of Prime's feet.

"Oh Primus, I just killed a priest!" Mirage dropped the rifle. "I didn't mean to hit him so hard."

"He was a brittle, corrupted old mech," said Prime. He knelt by Starscream's side. "Are you okay, Star?"

Starscream hissed a curse and sat up, clutching his side. "What, no pronouncements of grief over my probable death?"

Prime hid his grin behind the battlemask. "How many times have my soldiers shot the No-Spark Hell out of you and you've just laughed at them? Now get up, we've got to get working."

Mirage was staring at Talix's body. "He said he meant all this to happen. He said he meant for Cybertron to end up this way..."

"Ethnic cleansing of the highest order," said Prime. "I knew that there was corruption among the Elders, but not like that."

Taking a steadying breath, Prime ducked under the portcullis and into the round chamber of the Temple Proper. The room was dank from poor atmosphere circulation, the floor soft with a million years of biometal filings. The plinth and cradle were simple devices, not at all like the resting place of a God. But who was going to come in here but the Ur-Thaumaturge anyway?

"What happens now?" asked Mirage, awed into near-silence.

Where were the Matrix memories for this? Prime frowned, looked at the icon. It was not even the height of his waist. He'd need to kneel to access it.

"Let's proceed then," he said. He knelt before the icon, touched the uneven edges of the bowl.

Not uneven, he corrected. The bowl had an offset to allow a mech's chest to press in close. He looked down at the liquid, scented massblood. His own? Or that of a true Prime, holder of a Matrix? Starscream had said that they tasted the same.

Wires and protomass, flesh and circuitry. Prime reached for his chest-plates, suddenly self-conscious.

Mirage was gazing at him as if he were about to receive a blessed sacrament. Starscream, who had experienced the Matrix in every obscene way possible, was just impatient.

"Tell him to get on with it," snapped Starscream.

Prime stared down at his open chest.

The Matrix knew where it was. In the Temple. In the presence of Thaumaturgie. It knew and wasn't going to have a bar of it.

"He won't come out." Prime moved to touch his spark-case but withdrew. The psychological aversions to self-stimulation were too deep.

"What do you mean, he won't come out?" cried Mirage. "How did the priests make him come out?"

Prime could feel the Matrix getting ready for a fight. He'd seen the Matrix turn a titanium fork as thick as his thumb into a knurl of twisted metal.

"I can't..." Dread loomed over Prime. He was a spark-child again, forced to show the Matrix to strangers.

"Rust those slagging priests." Favouring his wounded side, Starscream knelt on the other side of the bowl. "Come here." He stroked Prime's spark-case.

Mirage sucked in a breath. "Be careful, you touch the Matrix wrong, it'll take off your hand."

Starscream threw Mirage a crooked grin. "We have an understanding."

He turned to Prime. "Do we have an understanding, him and me? You speak to your god. You tell him. He does this, I'll give you both pleasure you've never dared hope for."

Starscream leant over the bowl, stroked down Prime's battlemask and kissed him. As Prime groaned into the kiss Starscream reached behind his spark and stroked the retracted Matrix. It jumped at first, then swelled into the contact.

"Did he like being inside me? Did it feel good for him?"

"Yes," whispered Prime, "Oh yes."

"He can do it again, if he wishes."

Prime made a concerned noise, remembering how it had been no pleasure for Starscream, but the shared communication between them was as open as the sky. The Matrix unfurled itself into magnificence, hungry lamina, seeking sensation. Starscream stroked one pistil. Prime felt the words come out of him, broken glass and sheared metal. "He loves you Star. So very much."

The memories came, interlaced within the harmonics of his body's response to Starscream's hands, the touch and smell of him. Prime's past rose up in is mind, filled his body.

"You're ready now."

Prime vocalised only once, then plunged the Matrix into the cradle.

* * *

Cybertron's memory-well was colder than he had been prepared for. He didn't know what to do. But the Matrix knew. In a way, Prime would think later, the improvised lovemaking with Starscream, the use of the Matrix to plunge into another's body, prepared him for this vertiginous moment, this terror, this elation.

It was as if the Temple walls stripped away, if everything fell away, and he rested atop a high, needle-spired column over all of Cybertron.

For a moment he was overcome by beauty. Only for a moment, and then he began to feel the pains of his broken kingdom, one half so cold and sunless and brutal, the other baked into cultural stasis.

All the Autophage trails the dreaming-paths of Cybertron's macrobiology he could feel like his own internal energy transport systems, the movement of nanites through his own small self. But in the places were a road had interrupted a trail, in the place a dome had been built or a hive had been smashed to make way for a barrack or a battlement, he felt pain. The very orbit of Cybertron around the dying sun was like a song of agony.

_We shouldn't be here._

He wanted to move, to flex. He wanted to shake off the pollution of millions of years. The universe shrunk around him. He remembered long journeys. He remembered a creature not so much unlike himself. He remembered being Primus, and remembered, that all those things he still was.

But he had walked the streets like a mech, a god become protoflesh, sanctity become mundanity. He had taken on the disguise of his sparkchildren, the Dark Queen's sentient offspring. He was Primon, he was Prima, he was Alpha and Omega, Guardian and Vector and Nemesis, and then perhaps what was meant to be his last incarnation, Nova Prime.

Death does not come easily to gods. The universe was not ready to let him go, nor were his children. In their knowledge and self-determination, he'd given them the skills for a final rebirth. A Nemesis clone, a Nova sibling, a vessel with which to grow into, deeper than he'd ever existed with his other incarnations. Optimus Prime, a pinnacle, his ultimate achievement.

Now he was whole again, and back into his body. Now he could make a decision.

_I don't want to be here._

Where to? All the Primes in him clamoured for attention, but two spoke loudest. One was an oracle Prime grieving for a lost love, and the other who had just recovered a love he'd thought lost forever.

They were universal truths. The protoflesh at his core, the alt-mode of hyperdrives flexed and shuddered online. Deep inside him a faceless voiced mech cried out, _Vector Sigma?_ before he was drowned out by the roar of collapsing spacetime.

A moment here, a moment there. Moments mean nothing in the twisted manifolds of hyperspace. The sun disappeared and was replaced by the rings of Saturn, a distant yellow sun, and the energy-rich moon of Titan.

* * *

Skyfire felt the change in gravity, it roused him from recharge.

He walked to the balcony. Soft rain fell upon his bare face. The hydrocarbon sea slapped up against the battlements of the palace. A strange time for the tide to have turned, he thought. It was not due for another day cycle.

He looked up, peered through the dense clouds with his electromagnetic vision and saw Cybertron up there, trailing Saturn like a wounded soldier.

This was a startling sight. But Skyfire had seen many startling sights in his long life. This one would not be so different. He knew how it would go. From tonight there would be many changes.

Still, another few hours of peace left. He would spend them wisely, and returned to his berth, to his golden God Soldier clone.

* * *

_....(Next Chapter - Epilogue.)_


	44. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

* * *

Sometimes Ratchet sang to himself when he was working, if no-one was around. He'd once lived on the shadow-side of Cybertron, longer than some mechs had even lived. He knew the Insect songs of the barge loaders, the mournful work songs of the throttlebots that pulled the ships along the shallow channels. He knew the overseer's songs in the endless night.

Ratchet was singing when Prime came out of recharge. Ratchet did not pause, only smiled and finished the verse.

"The Thaumaturgie sung to grow the Matrix into me," said Prime, and he could taste old dust in his mouth.

"You remember that?"

"I remember many things." He turned his face away. "But not everything."

Ratchet leant over Prime and unhooked the sensors so that he could sit up.

Prime touched his chest. The Matrix stirred.

"Moving Cybertron took a lot out of it," said Ratchet. "And you."

"We moved?"

"This planet is following the same orbital path as Saturn now." Ratchet turned away, came back with a decanter of pink-tinged, almost translucent energon.

Prime stared down at the decanter, took a considered mouthful, and gasped. It was as if his neural pathways had been lit up like burning magnesium. He peered at Ratchet, not daring to believe. This was energon? What was its source?

"You've been unconscious for almost seven Earth-standard days," said Ratchet. "There's been more than a few changes."

* * *

From the balcony of Prima's castle Prime could see the shadow of the hastily-erected pumping station five kilometres away, the restraining wires thrown up like reaching arms against the yellow sky.

A light drizzle-fog obscured the five other platforms within sonar-sight. An ore loader made an uneven descent to sea-level, extruded pipes. Another waited in the upper atmosphere.

"The ore loaders handle hydrocarbon liquid just as well as bluecake dirt."

Prime knew Starscream's voice, and almost didn't want to turn around, for this is where all recharge dreams ended.

But he did, and Starscream was there, standing under the overhang. His normal colouring was obscured from carbon-soot. He halfway looked like a shadow or a statue erected in the centre of a plaza, honouring the long-gone God Soldiers.

Prime was suddenly shy. They were not in any danger. There was no desperate need to plunge themselves into each other again. They were both leaders who needed to work together. Perhaps a relationship now would be unwise.

"This is our energon source."

Starscream gave a nod. "We found it easy to distribute straight sea-liquid over the first few days. Energy was a priority. We've fed the planet now."

"Is Emirate Meridian co-operating with this effort?"

"Not at first." Starscream smirked. "But Mirage has a great deal of sway with the Alpha Council."

"I knew there was a reason I never gave up on him, for all that he did."

"He'll make Senator, if he chooses a political path." Prime heard in Starscream's tone that the two former antagonists had formed an important alliance over the week.

"Given the right circumstances, I'm certain Mirage will do very well."

"We even had some flesh...I mean, _human_ delegations offer support. Their hydro-engineering skills are primitive, but adequate."

Starscream walked to the edge of the balcony, and looked out alongside Prime. "There's enough energy here to last us a thousand years, but we'll only need a hundred. Get our infrastructure rebuilt. Then we can move somewhere permanent." He gave Prime a sideways look.

"It's a big solar system," said Prime." Well designed. The gas giants will vacuum up a lot of debris, and the sun's not going to collapse for another four billion years."

"You're intending to stay on Earth?"

"Yes."

No reply from Starscream. Prime glanced sideways at him, saw Starscream staring intently out across the ocean. Only now, knowing Starscream so well, did he notice the way the seeker's jaw had tightened, how he held himself.

"If I was reborn, then I can't make the same mistakes as my predecessors," Prime explained.

"Or even the same mistakes that you yourself have already made."

Prime leant forward and captured Starscream's mouth in his own. He could taste the new, sweet energon in Starscream, the processed sediment from the sea-bed so energy rich it could be eaten raw.

Starscream returned the kiss, folded his arms around Prime's shoulders, his thighs at his hips, gasping at his own response. "I need this," he groaned into Prime's audios. "I need it."

Hands under Starscream's aft, lifting him onto his hip-spurs. But the balcony was too unstable, and Prime was feeling more energetic than he had for a long time. Carrying Starscream like an ungainly gestalt, he stagger walked him to a nearby support column, pushed his hand between Starscream's legs. It always felt like running two dipoles magnets over each other, no physical barrier, but a force that could be felt and manipulated none the less. Starscream jolted with each press.

There was only a small dayberth in this room, barely big enough for the pair of them. They fell upon it, Prime lying back, Starscream straddling him. Sooty handprints marbled Prime's polished armour. Starscream humm-songed to himself as he flexed to his own fundamental harmonic. Joy enough just to lie back and watch him move through the stations towards overload.

Finally, during a moment of resolution he turned his lubricant-bright face towards Prime.

"Are you just going to watch me?"

"Yes."

"This is very unlike you."

Prime smiled. "I told Perceptor once that my biggest regret was never experiencing you. We were always so urgent, as if any minute all this would end."

"It could still end."

It was true. Cybertron was still a dangerous place, like a frontier town on the edge of anarchy. Starscream pushed back, found a different angle, kept going. "Ah, this is good."

"Nothing really ends," said Prime.

Starscream must have noticed then blank look on his face when he thought about the Matrix.

"Are you accessing him?"

"No. We don't have much to say to each other."

"The pair of you moved Cybertron."

"A team effort out of necessity. He's still a stranger. He responds to you better."

Starscream gave one of his inscrutable, narrow glances. Prime shrugged. He had worked with the Matrix, shared an experience but had not communed with his parasite beyond that. It was just the way things were.

At last Star unlatched his own chest-plates and exposed his spark, and Prime, gasping with renewed arousal, did the same. He kept away from memories, just concentrated on the present, brought Starscream to climax on the moment he began to overload through bodysex, the Matrix swirling in welcome through the interstices of Starscream's chest.

When he was certain his lover was completed, Prime let himself into the sweet fugue-state of overload, inarticulate happiness singing through him like a Thaumaturge song.

They recharged for a while on the narrow day bed before Starscream sat up.

"Blast, I almost forgot! You're supposed to be present at the Council meeting on Cybertron."

"I'll have the space bridge prepared."

A smirk from Starscream, more wry than anything else. "Of course, but it's so close we could probably fly."

* * *

"Understandably you'll need to stay here during the rebuilding process," simpered Emirate Meridian. The rearrangement of power had not benefited him. He'd lost his temporary blue-green colour-nanites and was now a bloated shade of teal. "We need a Prime present to issue the correct edicts and administer the laws."

"I'm not staying here," said Prime.

The High Council exploded into a ruckus. It was obvious from looking at them who had stayed and who had fled in search of safer harbours. The escapees all wore their ceremonial robes, the elements of their station. Those who had stayed had lost everything to the hungry ones.

Prime internal-commed Prowl. _Make a note on who stayed. Their reward needed to be substantial._

"What nonsense are you talking, Prime?" Meridian was saying. "A Prime belongs on Cybertron."

"I'm not staying, because we have moved into a solar system that doesn't belong to us. Haven't we learnt from the lessons of the Insect Wars, the Beast Wars, the Decepticon Wars? They brought us all to the brink of destruction, and in the end we all became Cybertronians. We will not do that to the humans."

"And what then?" shouted one Alpha Senator. It sounded like Senator Catalyst, although Prime couldn't make him out amidst the throng. "Will we eventually meld with these organics? Will we see ourselves spawning a race of hybrids from our pure protomass?"

"What if we do?" Prime replied. "That doesn't lessen the Beast or Insect castes among us."

Up on the mezzanine level, the Beast Delegates nodded. Nearly all had stayed during the hunger riots, and for them would be the reward of greater authority, greater status in the Council. The argument was won.

"You have no-one to stand in your place," said Meridian, mealy mouthed. "You leave us without an executor for your orders."

Prime caught sight of Mirage in the corner of his vision, the intensity of him. A famous Autobot leader had once said, _there are no real wrong decisions, only the failure to make them._

He had made a decision long ago.

"I have a Consort," he said quietly, and a thousand optics turned towards Starscream, who was wedged into a corner with some Ark-bots and what could only charitably be called shadow-side representatives. Starscream let only a second's surprise pass over his face, before he tilted his chin up.

"Him?" Meridian shouted. "_Him?_"

"He is my bonded Consort, and by the laws of Alpha Prime, he will administer Cybertron in my absence. You will defer to him Meridian, or you may take your complaint to the All-Spark."

A singular held breath. Prime had threatened death on Emirate Meridian.

"Starscream has already proven himself a leader among the Decepticons and shadow-side mechs. He will not be doing anything remarkably outside his experience."

He flashed Starscream a bold look, and Starscream, following a direct order from Prime for the first time in his life, nodded in obedience.

* * *

After the Council meetings were over, Prime excused himself.

There was far too much that needed to be accomplished in Cybertron's rebuilding, and they hadn't even brought the human factor in. The task seemed almost insurmountable.

Prime found himself walking into the Throne room, standing alone in the centre and wondering if he had made the right decision. Was he throwing too much on Starscream? Should he have chosen Mirage as an ad-hoc Consort-in-waiting, and let him handle his fellow Alphas in his own smoothly politic way?

Doubts besieged him.

"I can tell you're wondering what you've gotten yourself into."

Despite his need to be alone, Starscream was always a welcome sight. He looked around, shed cool cyberemones.

"This is the place where they made you show the Matrix to the Senators?"

"Yes."

"And look, a throne, so you could have the illusion of Leadership."

Prime nodded. "This is a bad place."

"I'll have it walled up." He looked at a grateful Prime, and did not speak until he'd decided what he was going to say.

"With you on Earth, and me here, we're not going to have much time to be together."

"I know. I've been wrestling with it ever since I made the decision."

A pause. "I cannot deny you other mechs. If they come to you."

At first Prime didn't understand what Starscream was talking about. Then it dawned on him, and he was shocked to consider such a thing.

"Starscream, I don't want anyone else."

Same cool stare. "When I could not be with you, you found others."

Prime remembered Tesselax's whore and opened his mouth in embarrassed protest.

"The circumstances were different, Star."

"The circumstances were the same. I could not physically be with you. You're a Prime. You found your release. You didn't want to, but you will, and you will again. I'm just saying that I won't grudge you that action."

"Starscream..."

"There are great longings and hungers in you. Twice as many now, because of _him_." Starscream pointed at Prime's chest.

Prime approached Starscream and now his arms wrapped around the rigid body. This had been a hard speech to make.

Almost like a surrender, Starscream let Prime support his weight.

"I love you."

"As you always say," said Starscream. Prime heard the lilt there, understood that Star had been pleased with the pronouncement, even though he had not the functioning circuitry to say it back.

"I will remain on Earth. I will take on their culture, their language, their traditions."

"Of course you will."

"Marry me," said Prime.

Starscream knew enough of human customs to know what Prime meant. Different laws, some alien, some universal.

When Starscream didn't say yes straight away, Prime pulled back. He could smell his own awkward fear.

Starscream frowned, rubbed his temples.

"We need to establish something first."

Prime felt his spark stuttering as if the wires had shorted.

"What do you mean?"

Without a word Starscream walked to the golden throne and sat upon it as if he were born to such heights. He spread his knees, opened his pelvic armour.

Starscream had been right, when he had spoken of the longings and lusts within him. There was no thought as to the inappropriateness of the act, now, when he'd asked about something so much more profound. Bodyhunger took over. Prime fell upon his knees before the throne, pressed his face into the magnetic accumulation, the visual-olfactory complex, the sheer, gratuitous taste. To think that he would be separated from this made his body shake as if he'd been denied an addictive chemical.

Starscream pushed his foot into Prime's shoulder, boosted him away. Panting, Prime met Starscream's optics.

"Please," his voice was hoarse.

"Open your chest."

Fumbling, Prime pulled his chest open and the Matrix fell out of him in a tangle of eager limbs and lamina, wrapping around Starscream's thighs, straining for entrance into the glorious well of protoflesh, a mere hand-span away.

Starscream shoved his other foot into Prime's shoulder. For several seconds it was a tug of wills, the primitive Matrix trying to pull Starscream to him, Prime vocalising his need, Starscream trying to keep his legs extended.

Then unexpectedly Starscream grabbed a loose pistil and teased himself with it, let it nuzzle the edges of his armour. Kept his fist wrapped firmly around the circumference so it couldn't quite penetrate him, watched with Decepticon cruelty at Prime's agony.

"He wants this?"

Prime let out an incoherent noise. Yes, the Matrix wanted him. No, it was not something that gave Starscream any pleasure so Prime didn't wish it on him. "Yes."

"Do _you_ want it?"

"Yes, sweet Primus."

"Tell him, if he wants me, he'll have to let you touch him."

Prime was dumbfounded. He couldn't touch the Matrix. He could barely touch his own spark.

"I can't."

A powerful push. Now they were both out of reach.

"Tell him to let you, or by Straxus and Primus and any other No-Sparked god, I'm not going to put myself through the agony of loving a Prime ever again. I'll fly away. It doesn't worry me. Now touch him."

At Starscream's urging Prime put his hands on the sulky Matrix and stroked it, furiously shamed.

"To overload, Optimus, or I'm not letting either of you near me. Ever."

Both Prime and the god regarded Starscream resentfully. Prime stroked the fronds of the Matrix roughly, his forbidden, hated passenger, and the Matrix snapped and bit at him, and the overload, when it came for them both, wasn't a climax so much as a kind of mortifying hiccup.

Yet Starscream understood. Their relationship was built on estrangement - it would take a while for the Matrix and Optimus to trust each other.

Sensing that he was being ignored, the petulant Matrix darted at Prime's spark, electro-bit him.

"Ow!"

"Stop it, you." Starscream grabbed a lamina, gave it a tug "I know you feel it when Optimus overloads."

He slid himself off the throne, rolled over onto his elbows and let Prime pour himself inside him from behind. Prime wrapped his arms around Starscream's waist as his hips and pelvis and thighs found purchase alongside Starscream's own.

Starscream clenched and released the woven gold fabric as overload approached. One of the Matrix arms was just long enough to stroke Starscream's cheek in apology. Starscream turned enough to take the sensitive end into his mouth, and Prime cried out, not caring if anyone heard. He vocalized until his mass was spent from him, his body still in spasm even as he had exhausted himself.

As he disengaged Starscream said casually, "Oh, the answer is yes, in case I forget. Seeing how you both agree."

"What about you," gasped Prime. "Are you going to find someone else? Your appetites are pretty expansive too."

Starscream gave him a quick teasing kiss, than a deeper one. "Where else am I going to find another Prime, then?" he asked. "My tastes have become quite refined, and I won't settle for second best."

* * *

Considering all that happened, they decided not to hold the human ceremony at the same time as the bondings; the ones between Mirage and Hound, Perceptor and Wheeljack.

"Double bondings are very rare," said the new Ur-Thaumaturge Prion. "It will mean a special connection with all of you."

Prion officiated the ceremony, which was light-hearted and entertaining, Perceptor singing a bonding song with the same tones as a drinking ballad known for its bawdy subtext. Mirage was more restrained, aware of the Alpha optics on him, some of them curious why this new Senator was bonding with a Beast-affiliated mech.

During recess there was a scuffle between Gears and another mech, which prompted Starscream to ask, "Does this happen to him at _every_ ceremony?"

"Yes, pretty much," said Prime, before holding Starscream close and swaying to the human musicians that Hound had demanded on having. Hound assured Prime that they were very famous on Earth and quite worthy enough for an Alpha bonding. Privately Prime felt sorry for them - they weren't so much older than Spike, and all looked terrified.

How different it was from Jazz and Prowl's occasion, or even both of his own. All the colours of hope and friendship swirled all about the hangar. In a moment of cheeky optimism, Prime grabbed Starscream's aft and said, "You look good tonight, Star."

Starscream pushed Prime's offending hands up to his waist. "Behave yourself. There's not going to be any business until after we're _married_."

Prime murmured in good-natured complaint. Starscream had been investigating this human bonding custom, had adopted some old traditions.

"I just want to touch you," he breathed. "Is that so bad? I haven't seen you since the Council meeting."

"Everybody's watching."

The heady atmosphere and a touch too much energon made Prime reckless. He took Starscream's hands in his, then laid them on his own waist, where the strong lines of his flanks and abdomen interlocked. Since sparksharing, he'd discovered that it was this unexpected place that Starscream was most visually attracted to, the way the plates bunched and stretched with banked power as Prime thrust his impressive mass into Starscream's body during lovemaking.

There were no coarse movements now, just the suggestion of movement, the way the plates slid and rearranged, the inner heat of bodymass.

"Does my body please you?"

"Yes," Starscream said, and sounded out of breath. The sharp scent of an almost painful arousal reached Prime. He knew that if they didn't get out of this room now he was going to have Starscream against the nearest wall, spectators be damned.

Starscream could sense that they had wandered to a point of no return. He backed off with a gasp. "I think...I need more energon. I think Perceptor has something I'm supposed to check on."

Prime rubbed his jaw as Starscream fled, tried to regain himself. It was looking very unlikely that Starscream was going to have sex with him tonight.

Ironhide sidled up to Prime. "We had a call come through on our English-speaking telephone line.

"They're not fighting again, are they?"

"Gosh no. Some human from Portland. Said he was a _civil celebrant_, a Mister Esperanza. Said he'd been speaking to some fellow with a deep voice and a Canadian accent."

"Really?"

Ironhide gave Prime a long look. "He said that yes, he has that day pencilled in." Another look. "He doesn't know what he was talking to, did he?"

Prime hid a smile behind his battlemask.

"Call him back, Ironhide, tell him it's confirmed. And better send Spike to collect him. I don't want him to be too worried when he finally sees who he's celebrating."

* * *

As it turned out, the celebrant had a sister who was a major in the US Air Force, possibly one of the first military units to have been in contact when the Ark awoke all those years ago.

Over the day the flat ground outside of the Ark entrance became festooned in a bewildering array of coloured globes, pyrotechnic units, and three piñatas, one which broke early - much to the joy of the children of the human guests.

More screams and shrieks of delight came at the shy approach of some of the few refugee spark-children. Protoflesh was invisible to humans, and the spark-cases had not yet formed around the sparklings' bright cores, so as far as the human youngsters were concerned they were being followed by dancing lights and magical footsteps.

"I'm glad they're getting along," said Carly to Bumblebee, watching the children play. "They're a whole new generation who'll be growing up together."

When evening fell, the first of the Catherine Wheels were lit, spinning sparks and flame. A cross-section of military leaders had been invited from across the planet. They stood in bright civilian shirts and passed around cigars and weight-training tips. The scientists took photos of each other in goofy poses around Perceptor-as-electron tunnelling microscope, and the lone invited journalist shared a jug of Sangria with a very pretty flamenco dancer, forgetting how potent sweet mixed drinks can be. His seeing-eye dog waited patiently for the unsteady pile of tortilla mince to fall off the end of the table.

Prime had been nervous, but it was a very agreeable kind of anticipation. Every dent and ding had been buffed out of his armour, and his colour-nanites shone. Even the dark shadows of old injuries seemed less noticeable. Jazz drenched him in gallons of clear mineral oil, which made Spike laugh.

"What's wrong?" Prime was hurt. "It's supposed to make my armour shine."

"Oil's an erotic tradition among humans," laughed Spike kindly. "You're supposed to cover yourself in oil _after_ you're married."

A small hologram shone from a nearby 3D tablet, showed Prime all his angles. Used to the clean, smaller bodies of his soldiers, his own image was off-putting to him. "Too big?"

"I think you look fine."

"Maybe he'll change his mind. How often has he changed his mind, or something has happened? Everyone will look their best tonight. Maybe he'll realise what he's missing out on, go for one of the racers rather than some big, beaten up throttlebot..."

Or worse, the thought to himself, be reminded how bad their actual bonding was, get spooked, fly away.

"Optimus, you look great. Don't worry!" With any other mech he would have given an affectionate hug and a nuzzle-kiss, but Prime got a respectful pat on the arm.

He arrived at the entrance to cheers and several hissing fireworks. Nearly tripped over a sparkchild wondering past in the daze of youth. In a Prime bonding, with all the rigid pomp and ritual, the sparkling would have been forbidden in Prime's presence, but Optimus patted him out the way.

Skids and Blitzwing were holding up a screen, and on Prime's approach they let it fall.

Prime's spark rhythms stuttered. He hadn't seen Starscream for over a month. Since then his colour-nanites had recolonised his wings, and now they were razor-sweeps of white-and-red, magnificent. He'd been polished up until he gleamed, the pyro-wheels daubing him with highlights of potassium fire.

Rather inappropriately he felt his bodymass swell behind his pelvic armour. He concentrated on not putting out cyberemones, stood alongside Starscream. Prime stole quick, thrilled glances at him, had never seen him so clean and detailed before.

So it was to the applause of everyone that the celebrant gave the best speech of his entire career, before motioning to the _robots gigantes_ to face each other.

The celebrant motioned to Starscream, who never appeared anything less than cool and in control. "You are more than just Prime," He spoke in Autobot, terrible accent and atrocious phrasing that had been cribbed from half a dozen songs, and yet Prime was touched. "On every circuit your name is written. My massflesh is useless to me, when you are not here. A source of pain, a font of longing. But you have joined with me tonight, and I am completed."

He mispronounced the last few phonemes, and at last Prime saw the true Starscream, the one the Decepticon would never let the others see. A naked look of panic. _Did I do it right?_

Prime nodded, solemn. "//You. Are. Acceptable. To. Me," he gasped in hesitant Decepticon. The blunt and ruthless syntax did not convey what he felt any more than letters scratched on a scrap steel did the entire Cybertronian Library. "//Your. Co-Efficient. Of. Worth. Is. High. You. Have. Exceeded. My. Expectations//" A terrible language. But Starscream responded to those words as he had never done if Prime had spoken in human or Autobot. His optics blazed in his face, spectral hues of wonder and relief and gratitude.

"I pronounce you married, kiss, kiss!" cried Esperanza, and clapped his hands gleefully and the fireworks exploded in reds and greens and violets, as everyone cheered and the disembowelled piñata showered trinkets on to human children and bobbing spark-lights alike.

To the frenetic music of a mariachi band Prime kissed Starscream again and again and then accepted the well-wishes of the humans, and the respectful touches from his soldiers.

"What a shame you don't have a bouquet to throw," said Carly to Starscream.

"One would worry about a human catching something that size."

A shower of bright meteorites lit up the desert sky as if even the universe was celebrating. One of the scientists, the unromantic Victor, said it was just the addition of another body in the Solar System, which earned him a dagger-look from his wife. He quickly found a flower arrangement and passed it to her.

Prime accepted two cups of energon before Starscream leant close. "Not too much, you still have business to take care of tonight."

Prime discarded the cube and pulled Starscream to him.

"I never thought I could be happy like this."

Starscream ran his hand over Prime's face. "It won't always be easy, Optimus. There a deep wounds in you, and I doubt I have seen them all."

A longing came over him again. He wanted Starscream now, not just physically, but cyber-spiritually, through spark and Matrix. There wasn't a time and place for sex though, the Ark was full, and the ceremony had more speeches ahead.

"I doubt they've all finished wishing you well."

"Let's take a walk," he said, "just to recalibrate."

They left the illuminated oasis of the celebration and walked away from the Ark until the patch of light had become small, the music reaching them in fractions.

"Do you remember when we first made love?" said Prime. "That day we walked back from the testing range."

"When Mirage had spoken his mind?"

Prime nodded. "I was so excited, so scared." He let his hand brush Starscream's own, hardly daring to believe. "I'd never been so turned on so by another mech before. I don't know what was happening to me."

"And now?"

"Nothing has changed."

Tinkling guitar music spilt out across the high desert. Over on the edge of the refugee camp, abandoned cellulose geodesics reflected the security floodlights.

Prime met Starscream's optics.

"We'll need to be quick," said Starscream, breathless. "The others...they'll hear us moving around, come and investigate."

They fell to the sand, Prime's hands roaming Starscream's body, his mouth hard on Starscream's own. Starscream reached for him, armour open. They had been too long between mass sharing. There wasn't time to prepare Starscream, to tongue his narrow opening wider to accommodate Prime's prodigious size, wasn't time to trace out all the pleasure-nodes on his body and bring him to full arousal.

"Star, Star," groaned Prime, and his aching mass steamed out. He tried to remember to restrain his entry like this, that his massling was bigger than average and a clumsy entry was uncomfortable. He palmed Starscream's thighs wider, and Starscream arched in anticipation.

"Don't wait, rust you."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"Optimus, it's always good."

Wincing, Prime drove his mass into Starscream's tender body, then lost his control as he was surrounded by the dimensional authority of hot protoflesh.

Their armour pounded against each other, a quick oscillation, counter-pointed by Prime's frantic breath. Starscream couldn't keep quiet, grunted with hurried animal sounds each time Prime rocked into him.

Even greater was the emotional wellspring Starscream had opened in Prime, a geophysical reservoir of love he'd kept dammed up for fear of it being run dry. That the two feelings could co-exist, lust and affection, was a miracle in itself.

"Oh, this is the first time we've made love married," groaned Prime, "I wanted it to be special."

Another scatter of shooting-stars painted the night sky. It was one of those clear desert nights when everything seemed to stand still, where the ground was as hot as massblood.

"We've only just started...oh...oh Optimus..."

Starscream overloaded, biting down hard to stop from shouting. He clung to Prime's shoulders and Prime completed the circuit. His spilt mass steamed as it hit the cold air.

Afterwards Starscream stood up, and Prime knelt before him. He lovingly scooped up handfuls of sand, to clean the evidence of their coupling from Starscream's body.

"You're supposed to be cleaning me off, not touching me up," said Starscream.

Prime only grinned at him, and continued his slow navigation of Starscream's legs, his pelvic cradle, his abdomen, and Starscream tipped back his head and blew out a long breath.

Their return attracted no attention. The microbot Astroscope, still a good head over the tallest human, was invited to hit the last piñata with a stick. Blindfolded, he hit it dead on.

"Hey, no sonar, no sonar!" protested Spike.

Prowl came to them as they watched the festivities from the outskirts, Prime's body was still tingling from overload. Prowl's olfactory units twitched. "I was looking for you two. Where'd you get to?"

He reached behind Prime and pulled out a dried jumble of twigs that had caught in a shoulder blade, raised an eyebrow ridge.

"Just checking some of the solar collectors."

"Yes," said Prowl, "seems the right time to do it. So what happens now? Do we find another executor for Cybertron?"

"No," said Starscream. "There's still too much to do."

"Nevertheless," said Prowl gruffly, "you'd better factor in several trips back here. Prime is impossible to reason with if he's pining."

"Thank you Prowl." Prime and Prowl shook hands, then Prowl gave him a quick hug, and was gone.

* * *

There was a human tradition of the honeymoon, but in the end their time together was cut short, as a fresh round of inter-city squabbles broke out on Cybertron and Starscream had to return. There were many still unaccounted for, Decepticons and Autobots alike. Peace had not come to the planet in one magical moment. A culture of war could not be instantly wiped clean, even with the rise of a new sun and a different sky.

Yet, thought Prime, the distance between him and Starscream, both measurably and culturally, no longer seemed insurmountable. Prime wondered what had happened. Was this the sparkbond, finally flowering to its full connections? Or was it something else?

In that little space they'd had between the wedding and Starscream returning home, Prime had experienced him in all the ways he'd ever wished for. He came to understand sides to Starscream he'd never really appreciated, how he'd underestimated the strength of him, the power in his limbs. Prime could only feel that strength when Starscream held him, guided him when he was lust-crazy. A weaker mech would not have been able to wrestle a measure of control when overload owned him.

They made love in their usual haunts, the Ark's nose, Prime's rooms (quietly, because of the refugees in the guest berths), in the ragged interiors of a mouldering shuttle in the hangar. Starscream was as demanding as usual, wanting to make up time he'd thought taken from him. Now it was Prime's turn to tease, to be the object of erotic delight.

But the relationship with the Matrix was what became truly astonishing. It was not like sparksex, with its deep understandings, or bodysex, with the blunt pleasure and mastery of having him mass inside another's. There were no moments where he could set himself slightly apart from the act. To arouse the Matrix was to be torn from sensation, to be surrendered to something vast and unknowable.

More than that, he thought. A knot of sadness within him, a scar-fist of grief had shaken free. Layers upon layers, metamorphosised emotions from Primon to himself, had finally been cast away.

There was a rare saying among the outer-city Alpha mechs. _Now you know what the Dark Queen knows._ Prime had heard Mirage say those words, seconds after the incredible blink-to-blink journey of Cybertron. Now you know.

The science-bots sometimes spoke of a link between Primus and Primon, a long epoch of development and evolution, seeds of knowing being sown within the Autophages. Sentience and self-awareness had flowered within them all of a sudden. Not gradually, like it was for organics, but sudden, a mecha-psychological Eureka.

Their kind has always existed in symmetry and accord with other species, other morphological types. Had some alien creature melded with Cybertronians long before the beasts and insects ever did? Was the Matrix a remnant of that?

Sometimes, in private he would release his chest and place his timid fingers on the outer edges of the Matrix. He'd shutter his optics. Relax himself, try not to dwell on the past. There were memories there, understandings accumulated over a million years. In time the Matrix would trust him enough and let Optimus in. Until then, the first steps in a new friendship.

_Now you know what the Dark Queen knows._

Yes, he thought, now he did.

When Starscream returned again, it was an exhausted mech that came back, mass depleted and injured, a projectile burn-scar across his right flank.

"I could bring Ratchet to look at that..."

"Shut up." Starscream straddled Prime, _a cheval_. Slave position. Whatever was happening on Cybertron, perhaps it was not going well.

Prime wouldn't have asked to mass share straight away, would have talked if that was what Starscream wanted, but Starscream always sung to different songs, and had straddled Prime without kisses or foreplay, or even much in the way of a greeting.

He drove himself on Prime's mass as if punishing himself. He pushed Prime's worried hands off his hips and down to his ankles where they wouldn't impede his movement.

"I want to _feel it_," he snarled, breathless between the roll and push of his pelvis. "I want...it...to...hurt."

Prime started to fold his faceplate down, wanted to kiss some sense into him, bring this down from self-abuse to love but Star laid an urgent hand over his face. "No. Don't show me your face...do it like a warrior. Like we've met...ah Straxus I'm close...on the battlefield..."

Prime knew he would never understand Decepticons, not as long as he lived. An Autobot would talk about problems, not impale themselves with such unrestrained violence. But he grappled Starscream around until he was on his belly, and Prime fell into him, weight and matter twisted into ecstasies and eternities. There was something different about Star, a density. Prime had to fight to keep his mass inside him.

Starscream cursed and spat and fought and overloaded savagely, a Decepticon wild thing, and Prime's body responded in dumb simpatico. Starscream's climax always made him excited beyond words.

Finally, Starscream became pliant enough that he let Prime disengage. The smaller mech lay back in the red dust, exhausted beyond mere bodysex. Prime propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Starscream, dazed now, spent silver spangling his thighs and the dust.

The lowland plains spread out before them, hazy in the late afternoon sunlight. Prime wondered if they'd made the right decision to meet here, on the sentinel-ledge. Yes, it was as usual the most private place in the desert, but there were too many memories here.

"Straxus, Optimus," Starscream sighed, throwing a weary hand over his optics. "I needed that. You've no idea."

Prime let his battlemask fall, kissed Star's overload-shiny face.

"Let me know what it's been like."

Starscream smirked, but let Prime slide fingers into the joints of his chest and release the catches that held his armour shut. Excited by the flash of pink spark, Prime undid his own pectoral plates and stroked the Matrix out from behind its depression with quick, shaking fingers. The Matrix swelled with arousal, sweated sliver-gold. Prime grabbed Star's hand, put it on the golden symbiont, moaned with delight. The Matrix undulated against the press of Star's hand.

"Oh," said Prime with gasping urgency, "Touch me there, I've missed you."

_Touch me...I've missed you._

"Not very subtle," said Starscream, droll, but he made no effort to move his hand away, and submitted with good humour to Prime's lust-clumsy advances, broad kisses, held Prime close while the Matrix-sheathed spark was pushed against his own, oozing gold and cyberemones of atavistic delight.

The sparkshared sensations were strangely disjointed. War, mostly, the long waits and sharp punctuations of terror. Prime complained when Star pulled his spark away, reached for him.

"Wait. Lie back."

Starscream straddled Prime's chest.

"Oh, you don't need to," groaned Prime, knowing that he needed it, and if he did not have it he would die.

"I want to."

Stoic as a martyr, Starscream let the creature fuck him until Prime sobbed in Matrix-overload, and was benevolently sympathetic when Prime became maudlin and weepy afterwards, babbling nonsense. "Ah, Star, Star, I want to crawl under your exoskeleton, I want to be inside you always..."

Flinching in a way that made Prime ache just watching him, Starscream pulled the laminal strands out of his body with restrained gentleness and fondled the crimson-stained coil affectionately despite all that the Matrix hurt him, helped ease it behind Prime's spark.

"I don't know why you let yourself do that," said Prime in wonder. "Its not necessary."

"I do it because I want to," Starscream said, fervently. "It's a Warrior's pain, like having a plasma sword slide in between your armour plates. Sometimes I cannot bear it." Starscream's hot glance. "And sometimes I need it more than anything."

A dragonfly landed on Starscream's shoulder, shook out iridescent wings. Starscream touched Prime's chest.

"You think of yourself as separate still?"

"Sometimes. Other times, when I'm with you, I forget that there's two of us."

Starscream traced the logo on Prime's shoulder in residual Matrix-gold. "You're a hopeless cause."

Prime thumbed a silver smear over fading scratches on Starscream's thigh. He trailed his hand up to the still-damp pelvic exoskeleton, played over the raw edges of armour where the colour nanites had sloughed off from friction. This dangerous machine, a fighter and warrior.

"You didn't let me in. You didn't overload."

Star took Prime's hand and mouthed the silver away. Prime kissed him on the mouth, tasted himself there.

The Matrix wasn't finished in playing with Starscream, and tapped its way out between Prime's armour plates again, friendly arms reaching.

"Blast," said Prime, catching the Matrix up. "One day he's going to do it during a Council meeting, and then what am I going to say?"

"Say that their god deserves a voice too."

Starscream dawdled with his passenger, hot mouth and quick fingers, the sacred core of him, the Matrix undulating in alien ecstasies and bringing Prime with it.

They suited each other, his Decepticon lover and his hated parasite, such pain and misery they had brought him both, his hubris and suffering. And yet Prime's reward was a boil of pleasure so intense he couldn't comprehend such a feeling without overload, could not fight it.

"I've something to tell you," said Starscream. "That's why I came back."

"Tell me now."

A secret smile from Starscream, and he looked out over the lowlands.

"No. It changes everything. Besides, I want to fly for a while. I'll meet you back there."

"Please don't be too long."

"It's evening already. It'll be night by the time you reach the Ark."

Starscream did that thing he did the best, that spark-stopping fall coupled with the afterburn kick, and the barrel-roll acceleration just as Prime feared Starscream had collided with the hard ground.

Prime did not mind so much being left behind. Later they would share their sparks and Prime would be up there in that sky, experiencing what Starscream experienced - nothing but the hot friction of raw wind, the burn of his thrusters at his heels.

And Starscream would search Prime's core for a peak moment of joy and find it, right here on this ledge, looking up into a sky the colour of Starscream's new eyes, and a perfect white contrail making its way into an indigo dream.

* * *

**THE END**

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**_A/N: Thankyou dear readers for joining me on this journey. Of course, I have a sequel planned, but for now enjoy The World's Translated Thus as it is. Please visit my profile if you would like a downloadable fanzine-formatted version of the story. Take care! Abyssal_**


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